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I,ti.IBRi\RY OF CONGRESS. II 







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THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 



THE FLETCHER PRIZE. 



The Will of the late Hon. Richard Fletcher, of Boston, by 
which Dartmouth College is made his residuary legatee, provides 
for a Special Fund, to be under the care of the Trustees of the said 
College, from the avails of which they are to offer biennially a prize 
of Five Hundred Dollars for the best Essay on the subject indi- 
cated in the following extract from the Will : — 

"In view of the numerous and powerful influences constantly 
active in drawing professed Christians into fatal conformity with the 
world, both in spirit and practice ; in view also of the lamentable and 
amazing fact, that Christianity exerts so little practical influence, 
even in countries nominally Christian, it has seemed to me that some 
good might be done by making permanent provision for obtaining 
and publishing, once in two years, a Prize Essay, setting forth truths 
and reasoning calculated to counteract such worldly influences, and 
impressing on the minds of all Christians a solemn sense of their duty 
to exhibit, in their godly lives and conversation, the beneficent effects 
of the religion they profess, and thus increase the efficiency of Chris- 
tianit}^ in Christian countries, and recommend its acceptance to the 
heathen nations of the world." 

The Trustees, in accordance with the said Will, offered the above- 
named Prize, extensively advertising the same in the public papers. 

The Committee of Award were: Rev. Alvah Hovey, D.D., Pro- 
fessor in the Baptist Theological Seminary at Newton, Mass. ; Rev. 
Joshua W. Wellman, D.D., Pastor of the Elliot Congregational 
Church, Newton, Mass. ; and Rev. Luther T. Townsend, D.D., Pro- 
fessor in the Methodist Theological Seminary, Boston, Mass. 

The Prize was awarded to the Essay in this volume. 



ASA D. SMITH, President. 



Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., 
Sept, 1, 1874. 



Clje Mttt^tx jpri^e Cssap, 



The Christian 



IN 



The World. 



BY 



REV. D. W. FAUNCE. 




< 



:C^ Or Co>s, 






BOSTON:^ 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

i875- 



^^^<:i 



^^l*!- 






WASHINGTON 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by 

D. W. FAUNCE, 

In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Cambridge : 
Press of John Wilson &^ Son. 



TO THE MEMOKY 

OF 

HON. RICHAKD FLETCHER, LL.D., 

WHO EXEMPLIFIED THE KELIGION HE PROFESSED WHILE 
HE LIVED, 

AND AVHO, BEING DEAD, YET SPEAKETH. 



CONTENTS. 



I. THE STATEMENT. 

Page 

1. Duty Practicable 3 

2. Duty Positive 9 

3. Duty demanded op Christians in the World . 12 

4. Duty demanded of Busy Men 13 

6. Duty demanded in an Evil World 14 

6. Confusion of Various Claims 15 

n. THE METHOD. 

1. Scriptural Statement of Moral Law 23 

2. Scriptural Method of Casuistry 27 

3. Scriptural Method of Biography 32 

4. Scriptural Method of Principles 44 

ni. PRINCn^LES. 

1. The Principle of Pleasing Christ 61 

2. The Historical Christ the Living Christ ... 53 

3. His Life studied . 55 

4. His Spirit received 58 

5. Love imitates 64 

IV. PRINCIPLES. 

1. The Principle of Duty to One's Self . ... 77 

2. The Broad View of Body, Mind, and Soul . . 78 

3. The Capacity for the Spiritual Life .... 90 

4. Personal Develop3ient 97 



vm CONTENTS. 

Y. PEINCIPLES. 

Page 

1. The Principle of Doing Good to Others . . Ill 

2. The Consecration of the Natural Impulse . . 116 

3. The Christian View of Man's Worth .... 121 

4. The Scripture Method of Teaching Immortality 125 
6. The Appliances of our Age 135 

YI. THE CHRISTIAN IN PRAYER. 

1. Through the Closet into the World .... 151 

2. Prater the Dictate of Gratitude 158 

3. Prayer a Command 161 

4. Prayer brings the Peculiar Grace of Godliness 163 
6. Prayer a Power to be used for our Fellow-men 166 

Vn. THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS RECREATIONS. 

1. Recreation not the Cessation of Christian Work 175 

2. Christian Ytews of Recreation ._ 178 

3. Principles applied 182 

4. Tendencies considered 197 

YIII. THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS BUSINESS. 

1. His Duty to succeed 204 

2. Religion a Help and not a Hindrance .... 209 

3. Business Right in Kind and Degree .... 211 

4. Christian Honor 212 

5. The Gains of Business 214 

6. Money has a Fixed Moral Yalue 218 

7. Principles applied 220 

8. The Spiritual Use of Worldly Things . . . 230 

9. Irradiation .... 233 



THE STATEMENT. 



1. Duty Practicable. 

2. Duty Positive. 

3. Duty Demanded of Christians in the World. 

4. Duty Demanded of Busy Men. 

5. Duty Demanded in an Evil World. 

6. Confusion op Various Claims. 



THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 



THE STATEMENT. 

'' A GOOD sermon that," said a man to 
his neighbor as they were leaving the 
church where they had listened to a sermon on 
the Christian duty of being " not conformed to 
this world." " Yes," replied the other, " it was 
a good sermon enough, but somehow these 
requirements of the Bible in that matter are 
impracticable for a man in business or in soci- 
ety. It was all right for him to speak as he has 
done ; he is a minister of religion. But this 
thing cannot be carried out in practical life." 

This man only said what many think. The 
sermon is to be heard, not done. The Bible, 
with its lofty standard of Christian living, is 
to be regarded with due reverence. Upon its 



4 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

wonderful word-paintings men are to gaze as 
travellers gaze upon the masterpieces in the 
Pitti gallery or at the Vatican. Christianity 
is, of course, a system of truth, — pure, grand, 
and without a rival. But the things required 
in the Bible are sometimes regarded as very 
far beyond what is to be actually expected of 
a Christian who is out in tlie world. There is 
often very little pressure as of immediate and 
positive duty in the presence of those texts that 
demand the highest forms of Christian living. 
So some practical engineer looks upon the beau- 
tiful lines on the tinted paper of the draughts- 
man. The machine appears well in the picture ; 
every thing is perfectly drawn. Here and there 
he finds, in the details, what he calls a " capital 
thought ; " but to his practised eye the draughted 
machine so beautifully depicted on that tinted 
pajDer will not work. Hints it contains that are 
worthy of praise ; but as a contrivance for doing 
a certain work, it is a failure. He declines to 
build the machine from those plans ; the thing 
proposed cannot, he says, be done in that way. 



THE STATEMENT. 5 

He may decide that, in the present state of 
mechanical science, it cannot be done at all. 

There are men who insist that the '' Sermon 
on the Mount " is teleological.^ — i. 6., that it de- 
scribes an end to be sought ; an end possible of 
attainment only in the more perfect ages of the 
world. According to this view it binds us, but 
only proximately ; it will be fully practicable to 
obey it further on in a riper and more Chris- 
tian state of society. Meanwhile, a tolerable 
conformity to its requirements is the practical 
standard for us. 

But many would hesitate at this ; they are 
unwilling to put a carnal discount on the com- 
mands of the Master. They see very clearly 
that this theory of interpreting the Bible would 
soil every precept, and would leave the words 
of Jesus about any practical duty with just as 
much or as little of meaning and of obligation 
as any man should choose to assign them. Nor 
could this vitiating process stop with the pre- 
cepts of the Bible ; it must be applied to its 
doctrinal teachings as well. In that case, its 



6 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

most direct statements of truth must be read in 
the light of the supposed capacity of any age 
or any individual to take them and use them 
for present profit. The truth to a man, in that 
case, would be whatever of Christ's words a man 
can accept as true. It would be only the coming 
man in the coming age who would be able or 
under obligation to take up and believe all our 
Lord's words. This principle once admitted, our 
Bible as now written would be so unlike the 
Bible which we ought to practise, that there 
could be no irreverence in rewriting the Sacred 
Volume ; and this '' new version," setting forth 
our duty in this present age, would be our prac- 
tical Bible to be consulted and obeyed, while 
that we now have would be only our theoretic 
Bible. But all this cannot be ; there must be 
some mistake in the process when such is the 
product. Words are quantities that God weighs 
as accurately as he weighs the atoms wherewith 
he balances the worlds. Jesus spoke not to 
angels, but to men of like passions with our- 
selves. 



THE STATEMENT, 1 

Abandoning the teleological view as untena- 
ble, we meet another view, — that of the oriental- 
ism — in these Biblical commands to a holy life. 
The precepts about unworldliness, the injunc- 
tions to '' turn the other cheek also," to " resist 
not evil," it is proposed to consider merely as 
instances of oriental extravagance in speech. 
They are to be toned down ; we are to repaint 
them in neutral tints, that we may be able to 
judge of the picture with our cooler occidental 
eye. It is alleged, sometimes, that the '' Ser- 
mon on the Mount," obeyed in Boston or New 
York, would bring any merchant in a week to 
the edge of bankruptcy ; that, obeyed in any 
town or city, it would unhinge all society ; that, 
since the difference between civilized and sav- 
age life is mainly in the fact that the one is 
provident for the future and the other is not, if 
society should obey the literal command to take 
no thought for the morrow, it would relapse 
into barbarism. It is therefore claimed that we 
must look upon the lofty standard of the New 
Testament as upon some overdrawn picture, — 



8 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

the necessity for the overdrawing to be found in 
the character of the age in which it appeared. 
But what shall be said of the words of the Apos- 
tle Paul in which Christians are told, ''be ye 
not conformed to this world, but be ye trans- 
formed?" There is no Eastern figure here. 
Nor can any tropical luxuriance be claimed for 
his words in this requirement. This, at least, is 
the plain prose of a simple command ; and yet it 
goes as far as any thing in the '' Sermon on the 
Mount." The truth is, this theory of orien- 
tal extravagance is quite as dangerous as the 
alleged teleological usage. The mere compar- 
ison may be oriental in form ; the setting of the 
gem may be antique ; but the gem is not the 
setting. The duty of Christian living is for all 
men and for all time. In some way these com- 
mands are binding. Obedience is possible. We 
may not carry our moistened sponge over the 
tablets of God's commands and then bind our- 
selves only by the half-legible lines that remain. 
Our work is not to bring down God's word to 
men, but to bring men up to it. What is due 



THE STATEMENT. ^ 

is to be done. There must be first an honest 
interpretation, and then an honest obedience to 
the texts wliich set forth the duty of a Christian 
wlio is to live among men. These texts are too 
many to be overlooked. The importance to 
religion itself — not now to urge its importance 
to one's own welfare — of a high type of Chris- 
tian living is such and so great, that we are not 
surpfrised at the prominence given to this matter 
in the Scriptures. The texts enforcing this duty 
are confined to no one book of the Bible. It is 
declared alike in the historical and the prophetic 
books ; in the cadences of poetry and the terse- 
ness of proverb ; in the artless story of the four 
Gospels, the narrative of the Acts, and the sub- 
lime unfoldings of the Revelation. Only a few 
of these texts need to be quoted. Let the few 
suggest the many. 

" Thou shalt love the Lord tliy God with all thy 
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, 
and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thy- 
self. 

" Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that 
1* 



10 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for 
this is the law and the prophets. 

" But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless 
them that curse you, do good to them that hate 
you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, 
and persecute you. 

" And that ye study to be quiet, and to do your 
own business, and to work with your own hands, as 
we commanded you; that ye may walk honestly 
toward them that are without, and that ye may 
have lack of nothing. 

"But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: 
but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, 
turn to him the other also. 

"But let your communication be. Yea, yea; Nay, 
nay : for whatsoever is more than these cometh of 
evil. 

"As we have therefore opportunity, let us do 
good unto all men, especially unto them who are of 
the household of faith. 

"Let him that stole steal no more: but rather 
let him labor, working with his hands the thing 
wliich is good, that he may have to give to him 
that needeth. 

"And if any man will sue thee at the law, and 
take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. 



THE STATEMENT. 11 

" Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man 
truth with his neighbor: for we are members one 
of another. 

"I have showed you all things, how that so 
laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to 
remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he 
said, It is more blessed to give than to receive. 

"Every man according as he purposeth in his 
heart, so let him give ; not grudgingly, or of neces- 
sity : for God loveth a cheerful giver. 

"For bodily exercise profiteth little : but godliness 
is jDrofitable unto all things, having promise of the 
life that now is, and of that which is to come. 

"And beside this, giving all diligence, add to 
your faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to 
knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; 
and to patience godliness ; and to godliness brotherly 
kindness ; and to brotherly kindness charity. 

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies 
of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, 
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable 
service. And be not conformed to this world : but 
be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, 
that ye may prove what is that good, and accepta- 
ble, and perfect will of God. 

" Let love be without dissimulation. Abhor that 



12 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

which is evil; cleave to that which is good. Be 
kindly affectioned one to another Avith brotherly- 
love ; in honor preferring one another ; not slothful 
in business ; fervent in spirit ; serving the Lord. 

"Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and 
clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you, 
with all malice: and be ye kind one to another, 
tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God 
for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. 

"And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved 
us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a 
sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. 

"For even hereunto were ye called : because Christ 
also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye 
should follow his steps. 

"See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, 
but as wise." 

It will be perceived that these calls to holy 
living are not addressed to monks and nuns. 
The Christian is in the ivorld. Society has 
its claims, and business its duties. Art asks 
attention to her treasures, learning beckons the 
student to her retreats, and discovery startles 
our wonder and enlarges our knowledge of the 
world that God has made. One must know 



THE STA TEMENT, 13 

something of all these things. A man has even 
less right to be a hermit in societj^ than in a cell. 
Each man has also his own calling, — his trade, 
his business, his profession, — in which he owes 
it to himself and to that calling to be a master. 
Besides this, there is the general knowledge of 
the world's progress which no man may safely 
neglect. Nor could he neglect it if he would. 
The story of what men are doing in every clime 
is spread out each day at a man's breakfast-table 
in the newspaper. One must keep abreast of 
his age. To do it is no easy matter. He must 
" know the time " if he would serve God in his 
day and generation. That Christian made a 
serious mistake who refused to read any thing 
save his Bible. And his neighbor was nearer 
the right who, first reading God's Word, laid it 
aside and took up the newspaper, saying, ''Now 
let me see how God is governing his world, and 
which of his promises he is fulfilling among the 
nations to-day." And yet, without the utmost 
care, the very rush and whirl of these things 
will overpower one. They will leave him little 



14 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

time for any thing else as he allows himself to 
become interested in them. A man easily gets 
to be a sort of sponge, absorbing the news of 
the day; the multitudinous things that arrest 
his attention taking all the energy of his life 
and filling all his earthly being. 

Then, too, the world is an evil as well as a 
busy world. Its tone is not Christian. To state 
the case very mildly, the world is no friend to 
grace. Things innocent are not always as inno- 
cent as they seem. They come wrapped about 
in an atmosphere of evil. The customs, maxims, 
spirit of the world are not of the Father. The 
evil is disguised. The ugly features are hidden, 
often, behind the silver veil. Sin is covert, 
stealthy, plausible. Satan is far too skilled a 
tempter to show the cloven foot. He never 
says, '' I am Satan. I am about to tempt ; 
therefore, have a care." He is an angel of 
light in guise and in tone. Men never go 
straightforward down to evident ruin. They 
go sideways, with one eye back on the right. 
The road to ruin lies always through the valley 



THE STATEMENT, 15 

of deceit. And yet in such a world as this, 
amid these ten thousand hindrances, the Master 
calls LIS to undertake the task of being Christians, 
and he sets forth before us not only the perfect 
commands of a holy law, but the perfect model 
of his own sinless life. 

As if to make this confusion more confounding 
for us in any decision about our duty, there is 
another and an antagonistic element. Side by 
side with the kingdom of evil there is established 
the kingdom of God. There are holy as well as 
unholy influences at work. Millions have felt 
the touch of a higher life. Through the sin- 
dried veins of their nature a new and healing 
tide has come to flow. The withered and shriv- 
elled soul has begun to swell out into fairer 
proportions. The divine life has come to them. 
And though the old struggles in them with the 
new, there is work of the noblest kind to 
which the better nature prompts them. This is 
the age of philanthropy ; nay, of philanthropic 
enterprise. The broadest Christian charities 
are now not only projected wiseh% but are as 



16 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

diligently worked. These outreaclied hands of 
Christian men and women are extended, towards 
the whole race. They are giving men every- 
where the Bible and the school-book. Such 
enterprises claim our prayer, our sympathy, our 
money. Never was it possible to do so much 
good as now. Never could a man touch so 
many men before. The clipper ship of twenty- 
five years since has given place to the swift 
steamer; and the steamer to the telegraph. 
The nations are no longer separated. Man's 
words go flashing through the seas and across 
the continents. The air, the earth, the ocean, 
are vocal as man everywhere speaks to man. 
Can we wonder that devout men, when they see 
God thus gathering the nations as of old he 
gathered them under Roman rule in preparation 
for the advent of his Son, are looking on with 
expectant eye ; that some of them are asking 
what these things mean, and whether they do 
not betoken the speedy conversion of the world 
and the speedy second coming of Christ ? 

But, be that as it may, this is true ; that our 



THE STATEMENT, 17 

sphere of religious activity is broadened ; and 
the Christian who lives in this nineteenth cen- 
tury has need to be intensely active in the grand 
enterprises that are being pushed with vigor in 
obedience to the great commission of our Lord, 
— enterprises as broad as the world. 

See, then, where the Christian stands. Influ- 
ences from beneath and from above engird him. 
This world and the other both urge their claims. 
Society, business, recreations, literature, the arts, 
the news of the day, the duties of citizenship, 
the claims of the family, the tempting world, the 
stealthy evil, the ripe questions of reform, the 
duties of private devotion and of public wor- 
ship, the demands of benevolent enterprise in 
its hundred forms, — these things all utter at 
one and the same time their multitudinous voices 
until the earnest heart is confused, baffled, and 
perplexed. May one do this thing, or only that ? 
Some good men say yea, and some, as good, say 
nay. May one engage in that or the other kind 
of business ; read this or that class of books ; 
attend the theatre or only the opera, or go to 



18 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

neither ; play this or the other game ; what time 
spend in social life, and what time devote to 
prayer ? What style of living shall a Christian 
adopt, and how much may he spend on dress 
and furnishiiig ; and, since no man lives on the 
♦ bare necessities of life, what luxuries may lie 
rightfully enjoy ? What shall he spend on 
himself, and what shall he give to others ? 
What is his duty in the matter of benevo- 
lence ; and, out of the myriad forms that open 
themselves to his view, which shall he select as 
God's steward? Is it then an easy thing to 
be a Christian in such a world as this ? A man 
seems to be sometimes in one of those old Roman 
labyrinths where dark and narrow passages open 
to him on every side, and he must choose among 
them. x\nd how great the danger of a wrong 
choice ! But we are sure that if the labyrinth 
is perplexing it is not so on purpose for our 
misleading. The danger of mistake is only for 
the quickening of our vigilance. There is a 
clew. It is ours to find and follow it. For, 
louder than the loudest din of this worldly 



THE STATEMENT, 19 

Babel, sounding clearer than all its confused 
noises, is the voice of the Master calling us unto 
holy living. He calls us first to go aside with 
him. He asks us to come apart from men, that 
in the '' still hour " of devotion we may learn 
his will. And then, when one has had audience 
with Christ, he may go out of the closet into 
active life divinely taught how to be a Christian 
in the world. 



THE METHOD. 



1. Scriptural Statement of Moral Law. 

2. Scriptural Method of Casuistry. 

3. Scriptural Method of Biography. 

4. Scriptural Method of Principles. 



II. 

THE METHOD.- 

TT is the first step towards a higher style of 
Christian Uving when a man honestly de- 
sires to know the full measure of his duty. We 
refer him directly to God's Word ; we ask his 
careful attention, if he would be a '' Christian 
in the world," to those texts of Scripture already 
quoted (see page 9), and to the multitude of 
similar directions to be found in every part of 
the Sacred Volmne. 

There is a story of a certain infidel, who, per- 
suaded to read his neglected Bible, opened the 
book carelessly and half contemptuously. His 
eye fell first upon the ten commandments as 
recorded in Exodus xx. He read them ; he was 
amazed at their comprehensiveness ; there was 
nothing to be taken away; there was nothing 
to be added ; they were absolutely perfect ; 



24 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

there was no possible duty that they did not 
cover. As the sunshine is the best evidence of 
the sun's existence, so the flash of this moral 
brightness proved instantly to him that the 
book which contained these commands was from 
God. And yet that which had so smitten him 
with moral conviction was simply and only the 
clarity and perfectness of one thing in our re- 
ligion, — the clarity and perfectness of moral 
law. 

What is moral law ? It is the bond that binds 
a moral being. What kind of a being is a moral 
being ? He is a being capable of moral action., 
— action in view of what is right or wrong. 
Such a being is man. Moral law is, then, the 
original bond of duty towards God and his 
fellow-men. It binds man not as under one dis- 
pensation or another dispensation ; not as having 
certain ritual duties at one time under the teach- 
ing of Abraham, at another time under Moses, 
at another time under Christ ; but it binds man 
as man. It goes down below all dispensations ; 
it discloses the duty of moral beings as such. 



THE METHOD. 25 

It is the great original rule of righteousness for 
man as a being with reason, conscience, affec- 
tions, and will, — a being who, because possess- 
ing these endowments, is a moral and responsible 
being. 

One declaration of moral law was given on 
Sinai, the mountain aglow with flame and trem- 
ulous with thunder. The moral law was of 
course binding before the nascent nation of the 
Jews gathered solemnly at its base to wait the 
return of Moses. Some law had bound Adam 
in the garden, and Abraham in the land of 
promise. It must have been moral law. Upon 
that, as the only possible foundation for any 
special commandment, there was given to Adam 
the special duty concerning the fruit of the tree, 
and to Abraham the special duty of placing his 
son Isaac on the altar. Moral law binds every 
moral being whether before or after Sinai. In 
the Jewish version of it given on Sinai, there is 
no hint as of any thing new. There is no defi- 
nition as of things then first commanded. Law 
was then announced, not then enacted. Surely 



26 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

theft, covetousness, and murder, were not then 
for the first time made crimes, even for the Jew- 
ish nation ! Nor is there a hint of any ceremony 
in this version at Sinai. Ceremonies belong to 
separate dispensations, not to moral law. Moral 
law is universal. The ritual law — the law of 
the Levitical ceremonies — was given on another 
occasion, and for a widely different purpose. 
That was to bind a particular nation for a defi- 
nite time. But the law of Sinai was moral law. 
Summaries of moral law are also found in the 
prophetic and poetic books of the Bible. '' What 
doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, 
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God? " 
"Hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear 
God and keep his commandments; for this is 
the whole duty of man." And in the New 
Testament our Lord has given us his summary 
of moral law in the words, '' Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neigh- 
bor as thyself." 

Now it is possible that the very completeness 
of this standard of duty may discourage a really 



THE METHOD, 27 

honest and earnest man at the commencement of 
.his inquiries. He desired to know his full duty. 
He craved specific directions as to wha't to do 
in specific circumstances. He desired a book 
of directions ; and he finds a book of principles. 
He hoped to be helped in questions of casuistry^ 
i.e.^ " cases of conscience." He desired a Bible 
in which these '' cases of conscience" should be 
taken up one by one, and so decided for him 
that there could be no mistake. Just now, 
indeed, this whole matter of casuistry has fallen 
into disfavor. The so-called '' casuists" of the 
Roman Church, and especially those of the Jesu- 
it Fathers, who were so mercilessly exposed by 
Pascal in his " Provincial Letters," have made 
the very word " casuistry" odious. It has come 
to signify that trickery of moral reasoning 
whereby the evil is made to appear to be the 
good, and the wrong to be the right. But the 
word in its best sense is to be retained. ''Cases 
of conscience " will always arise, and they are 
to be met. The way of duty is not always 
clear to a man. Let not those who would give 



28 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

counsel to men in their spiritual perplexity be 
stigmatized as casuists. The old Puritan divines 
dealt much in these " cases of conscience." 
Boston, in his '' Fourfold State," and Flavel, 
in his '' Touchstone," — books largely read half 
a century ago, — devoted much space to this 
method of religious teaching. And every parent 
to-day, who is asked by a conscientious child, 
'^Is it right to do this or that thing?" is, for 
the time, a casuist to that child. Every pastor, 
asked by his young people about questions of 
amusement, or, by his older brethren, about 
matters of practical righteousness, is forced to 
be a casuist. Nay, each man of us is compelled 
sometimes to be a casuist unto himself, deciding 
in special cases what he ought to do. And just 
here men feel their need of help. 

Very many think that duty would have been 
much simplified had the Bible been a book of 
infallible directions as to practical duties, — a 
volume of casuistry. And to a certain limited 
extent it has indeed entered upon the decision 
of such questions. Our Lord and his Apostles 



THE METHOD, 29 

have determined more than one of the cases 
submitted to them. The instant decision about 
" the tribute money," the matter of " wearing 
gold and costly array," of "eating meats offered 
to idols," of ''remaining covered or uncovered" 
in the church, — these show clearly that the 
method of the Bible is in part that of casuistry. 
But in these cases just named there arises the 
question as to how far these decisions were made 
in ^iew of circumstances peculiar to those times ; 
as to how far, in entirely different circumstances, 
under a wholly different type of civilization, we 
are bound by them. They are plainly not moral 
law. No more do they belong to a particular 
dispensation. They are simply applications of 
Christian principles to local cases. They are 
inferential duties. And here, where men feel 
their greatest need of direction in practical 
living, they are wont to think that they have 
no sufficient guidance. They are not sure that 
the Scripture instances exactly meet their case. 
The widely different conditions of a man in 
society to-day make us reluctant to apply rules 



30 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

which were evidently given to meet a condition 
of things long since passed away. 

Had the biblical method been mainly that 
of casuistry^ — the citation of cases so that we 
might compare our own with them, — two 
things would have followed. First, we should 
have in this always increasing Bible the most 
ponderous of volumes. In that case the differ- 
ing ages and habits and modes of thought, as 
they bring new duties and furnish new instances, 
must all have their record. Our Bible would 
be a sort of law-library of court decisions. In 
that case, John's words about the world not 
being able to contain all the books if every thing 
were written would be no more an allowable 
figure of speech, but a nearly literal statement. 
And it would follow, next, that we must spend 
a lifetime in search of precedents. This pon- 
derous volume might require the search of years 
before we should discover any thing that looked 
like our own case. A single circumstance in 
which the recorded precedent failed to match 
the instance that we should bring from our 



THE METHOD. 81 

own lives might vitiate the precedent, and leave 
lis as undecided as before. Let us suppose a 
simple instance. Let it be certain — certain by 
a divine revelation — that A should give a 
specific sum of money to a specific charity. He 
expends thousands in endowing a professorship 
in some college or seminary. Now does it follow 
that B^ with the same wealth and income, should 
do a similar thing ? Some one circumstance in 
5'« situation or prospects may change the whole 
case. The two men may be widelj^ dissimilar 
in necessary family expenses, in probability of 
future life, in the dependencies that belong to 
their position. It is impossible that the certainty 
of ^'s duty should absolutely bind 5's action. 
The duty of both is to give. But B'^ duty may 
be to give more or less than A. It is indeed 
helpful, in a general way, to see another's duty 
when we have to decide our own. We may 
infer what we should do from our knowledge 
of what another has done. But this is quite 
another thing from the absolute decision of a 
casuistry which is its own law. So that had 



82 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

tliis been the scriptural method of teaching iis 
our duty, nothing would have been gained, but 
much lost. It is better as it is now, on the 
score of simplicity. There are just enough of 
these decisions in God's Word to teach us that 
religion is a practical affair. But we are not 
to be so careful as to the precedent as to be 
careless of the principle. 

The Scripture method is also that of biography. 
It is worthy of our notice that a very large part 
of our Bible is historical ; and its historical por- 
tions are mainly biographical. We are coming 
back in our methods of historic composition to 
the model furnished us by the great Hebrew 
lawgiver and historian. He gives us the story 
of the life of representative men. We look on 
an age through the eye of the men who saw 
it best. Every movement of human thought 
culminates in some man. To know him is to 
know it. To see all the events of an age as 
he saw them is to see it in its own light, and 
to judge of it as it should be judged. The five 
books of Moses are a series of personal sketches, 



THE METHOD. 33 

of indiyidual biographies ; and with these are 
incorporated the chief events of each generation. 
The same method is pursued in all the historic 
books till we come to the Psalms. And even 
the Psalms are only another kind of biography. 
They are the interior history of a human soul 
looking out upon the moral events of God's 
world, and then uttering itself in the strains of 
sacred song. And the book of Ecclesiastes is the 
biographj^ of a man who was first a worldly man, 
next a sceptical man, and finally a godly man, 
and who faithfully describes his experiences, his 
reasonings, and his conclusions, in each of these 
positions. Even the prophetic books are not 
wanting in constant reference to the personal 
history of their authors. And in the New 
Testament, the Four Gospels and the Acts are 
in the form of direct biography ; while Paul and 
Peter, in their Epistles, are presenting continu- 
ally to us fragments of their own experience in 
the religious hfe. 

And each saintly soul is eminent in some beau- 
tiful virtue. The steady faith of one and the 
2* c 



84 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

intense consecration of another, the tender love 
of this and the rugged earnestness of that man, 
the patience shown here and the wise zeal that 
blazes there, — all go towards forming a book 
of the choicest biographies in which each select 
grace of character has some bright exemplar. 
The names of these holy men and women have 
passed into history. They are famihar to the 
language of the world. They are the illustrated 
alphabet of human goodness. And wherever 
men call to mind any shining virtue, any beauty 
or grace of character, they link the thought of 
it with some name in this great and golden roll- 
call of the men '' of whom the world was not 
worthy." Nor does it matter very largely that, 
in saying these men were imperfect, we are only 
confessing that they were men. The one pat- 
tern, '' the man Christ Jesus," stands out bright 
enough and far enough above them all. So that 
for higher example we pomt any man to him. 
Christ is the illustration of Christianity. No 
other is needed. One sun is enough for our 
firmament, though there be many stars. No 



THE METHOD. 35 

need that on the one hand every star should be 
sun ; nor, on the other, that we deny to any 
star its own brightness. 'These men were not so 
removed from worldly trial that their virtues 
were the easy goodness of men untested by 
opposition. They fought in the good fight. 
Their brows, if smooth and even, were worn 
down to that evenness by the chafings of actual 
life. They had no select and secluded station. 
Found in every rank, they adorned their posi- 
tion by the lustre of their piety. Some dwelt 
in shepherds' tents and some sat on thrones. 
Some served in palaces and some suffered in 
prisons. Some wandered wearilj^ through 
strange lands, nor knew a home, and some gath- 
ered about them wealth and beauty and art. 
They had no idea that they were doing any 
thing very great. No thought had they of the 
world-wide fame they were achieving. So true 
is it that the names of men who work for earthly 
fame are " writ in water,'' while those who link 
themselves with God and his cause sometimes, 
by their very forgetfulness of self, secure self- 



36 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

renown. They gain an earthly immortality in 
the memory of the holy, and they gain always a 
place on the pages of the Lamb's Book of Life. 
Their names shall be read out at the judgment 
amid the acclaim of the assembled universe. 

And the wisdom of God in selecting this bio- 
graphical method of teaching becomes the more 
clear as we remember how powerfully the story 
of a human life always affects us. No matter 
how obscure that life, so it be well told, it takes 
"US captive. It wakes responsive feeling. It has 
in it the tender touch that makes the world 
akin. Not a little of the moral teaching of our 
time is done by the novelist. The old novel 
with its impossibilities has gone by. '^ True 
to life " is the standard to-day. Is there some 
abuse in court or hovel, is there some delay 
of the law, some barbarity in social hfe, some 
excrescence on the fair form of a nation's free- 
dom, some political error working mischief to 
humanity, the novelist sees in it his opportu- 
nity. Sketching that evil in its effect upon 
some character that is the child of his fertile 



THE METHOD, 37 

brain, he holds up the sin to the scorn of the 
age. It needs not that he be himself so far in 
advance of others. He may not be personally 
higher than his fellows. He needs not be him- 
self a philanthropist to sketch the character of a 
philanthropist any more than he needs to be a 
villain to sketch a villain's vrork. He may have 
only the artist's sense of what is fit^ and right. 
His aesthetic nature may be his only guide when 
his work serves high moral purposes, and helps 
to a needed reform. 

And so, too, if there be any saintly virtue 
to be shown to men in a better glory than any 
which painter ever threw on canvas, the story 
of some man or woman who stands, not with 
the traditional white wings and flowing gar- 
ments in which the old-time painters strove to 
make piety so unworldly that it was unreal, — 
not tills, but the story of that life as it works 
itself out in rough contact with that which is 
unfriendly, will always touch us into a fresh 
admiration of the virtue itself. We part from 
the story, as we close the volume, only to feel a 



38 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

stronger impulse to imitate such a virtue, and 
a keener sense of the way to do it. Beautiful 
was the precept, and we approved it. But more 
beautiful is the instance and example that has 
charmed our hearts. And we must notice that 
God's method of teaching through biography 
has all the charm, all the pathos, all the vigor 
and impressiveness, with none of the necessary 
evils^ of the modern modes of instruction. He 
gives us real lives. He had centuries from 
which to select these examples. These men 
are actual men, not figures stuffed with straw. 
They are seen not as persons of '' impossible 
goodness," but they have the spots of our 
humanity on the disk of the very virtue that 
makes them illustrious. We never have to stop 
and say that this man is such a paragon of 
excellence that the virtue is angelic rather than 
human. We never have to impose on ourselves 
the mental trickery which we accept when 
studying the novelist's characters. We need no 
effort of imagination to make the Bible heroes 
actual men. We have never to play that fiction 



THE METHOD. 39 

is history. These men of the Scriptures are our 
brethren, — higher, better in degree, but still 
our brethren in the flesh, even while they are 
examples to us in every grace of the Spirit. 

Nor is this method confined to the good. The 
Bible-pictures of bold, bad men are among the 
most striking in the whole volume. The writers 
never go out of their way to find bad men. But 
when they meet such men, they do not shrink 
from showing them up to the gaze of the world. 
Sometimes they transfix a vile man by a single 
epithet. How little is said of Judas. But what 
is said "pinions him as sure as Prometheus to 
the rock." Sometimes we see a man working 
out his wickedness, passing on through the steps 
of his sin. We trace him in all his thought as 
the desire grows up to the fructifying deed. 
We look at him in all his fears and hesitations, 
which, after a useless struggle, do not hinder 
him from the final and fatal end. AVhere else in 
lines so sharply drawn is there another Pilate ? 
An express biography of the man would have 
been nothing to it. His baseness is baser for 



40 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

the contrasted glory of the being whom he is 
certain to give over in the end to the mob. 
The washing of his hands, his mingled weakness 
and Itypocrisy, — why these gospel writers have 
gibbeted that man for ever ! 

And he who would be a " Christian in the 
world" must be familiar with these biographies, 
that his hatred for the evil and his love for the 
pure and the good may be increased. There is 
so much in this world to confuse moral distinc- 
tions, so much special pleading for special forms 
of wrong, that we have reason to study these 
records which were made without fear or favor ; 
biographies of good men that help us to feel that 
goodness is real ; biographies of evil men that 
make us know the wrong as a hateful thing. 

But when we have studied as carefully as we 
may these life-histories, there is one thing that 
troubles a practical man. It is the same fact 
which we found when studying the Biblical 
cases of casuistry. Our case is never exactly 
met. There is always some one important thing 
in which the precedent does not apply. These 



THE METHOD. 41 

old-time heroes lived in other lands, amid other 
surroundings. Their biographies help us. They 
rouse us. To a certain degree we feel bound to 
imitate these noble souls. But it is in the little 
things of life that we trip most easily. And in 
them we need the most direction. But just here 
is where precedent and example serve us least. 
They do not crowd our consciences to be brave 
in matching our deeds with those of such men. 
For it is the tone of a life which is more to us 
than its acts ; just as the touches that make up 
the manner of a master are those most difficult 
to imitate in our copy of his picture. 

Nor must we forget that God's method of 
teaching requires a very peculiar spirit in us ; 
a certain receptive temper ; a tone of sympa- 
thetic feehng. The Bible has something for 
all. It has a key for every heart. It addresses 
the sinful. It aims to touch the higher tier 
of faculties in every man. He may not yet be 
holy, and there may be in him no holy emotions 
to which an appeal can be made. But there are 
certain natural desires. They are his by virtue 



42 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

of liis manhood. There is a natural '^ love of 
possession." This is addressed by the Bible. 
It bids him lay up treasure in heaven. There 
is the natural " desire for happiness." The 
Bible calls him to seek the narrow way that 
leadeth unto life. There is in every man a 
'' dread of sorrow." And this natural feeling is 
also addressed by God's Word. It bids the man 
to fear him which " after he hath killed hath 
power to cast into hell." But the special 
teachings of Scripture are for those already in 
sympathy with its holy principles. It asks that 
one, first a Christian himself, shall go out into 
the world for which Christ died as in some 
sense his representative. He is to represent 
Christ in his words, his conduct. Those words 
and that conduct are to be permeated with the 
Christian spirit. For better than any merely 
mechanical rules is the loving expression of 
the spirit of vital religion. Not that rules are 
useless. Not that a man is above them. Not 
that, apart from express commands, a man is a 
law unto himself. But piety has an instinctive 



THE METHOD. 43 

knowledge of how rules are to be interpreted. 
It finds in them not bondage but liberty. Nor 
is its liberty the license that disobeys any com- 
mand. For this liberty is sympathetic, and so is 
swift and sure in its obedience. Sometimes we 
have seen two human hearts that understood 
each other so perfectly that one would take 
up the half-finished question of the other and 
answer it before it had hardly left the other's 
lips. And sometimes even a glance has been 
enough without a spoken word. There are in 
God's household service little uncommanded 
things that a soul in sympathy mth God has 
no need of being told about. Enough that they 
will be likel}^ to please God. The glance directs. 
^' I will guide thee with mine eye." 

This is the tone of piety needed to-day in 
practical life. He who wants to be a Christian 
out in the world, w^ho would be in vital contact 
with men in his own age, who would be a live 
man and yet a faithful disciple, must obtain and 
retain this inner sympathy with God's gracious 
purpose. This divine instinct will help him 



44 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

more than any thing else ; for it is the effect of 
God's indwelling and illuminating Spirit. It 
will guide him as a student of the Scriptures in 
search of wisdom to order his life. It will help 
him to give due authority to moral law. It 
will enable him to see what is peculiar to the 
Christian dispensation. It will free him from 
the two widely different dangers, of slavish 
precedent in one direction, and of carelessness 
about things commanded in the other. It will 
help him amid the wonderful richness of Script- 
ure biography to adopt the virtues of holy men, 
and then to express those virtues wisely and 
well in the changed circumstances of the pres- 
ent hour. He will study the Bible iov principles 
as well as precepts. He may not always at 
once be able to apply those principles when 
discovered ; may wish that in some cases duty 
were plainer ; but in the end he may come to 
see the wisdom of God in his methods of teach- 
ing. There is secured in this way the best 
moral discipline. We learn to exercise a Chris- 
tian judgment and heart about our duty ; and, 



THE METHOD, 45 

perhaps, the discipline to be gained only in this 
way, only by this careful study, only bj^ this 
exercise of a Christian judgment in determining 
under God our duty, is the very thing that he 
desires us to secure by all this variety of method 
in his Holy Word. 



PEINCIPLES. 



1. The Principle of Pleasing Christ. 

2. The Historical Christ ; the Living Christ. 

3. His Life Studied. 

4. His Spirit Keceived. 

5. Love Imitates. 



III. 

THE PRINCIPLE OF PLEASING CHRIST. 

T^R. ARNOLD, of Rugby, lays down the fol- 
lowing rule with reference to the pre- 
cepts and precedents of the Scriptures: — 

'' A command given to one man, or to one 
generation of men, is, and can be, binding upon 
other men, and other generations, only so far 
forth as the circumstances in which they are 
placed are similar. A commandment of eternal 
and universal obligation i§ one that relates to 
points in which all men at all times are alike, 
and which there is the same reason, therefore, 
for all obeying equally. Other commandments 
may be of a transitory nature, and binding only 
upon particular persons, or at particular times ; 
but yet, when they proceed from the highest 
authority, their indirect use may be universal, 
even although their direct use be limited. That 



60 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

is, from knowing what Avas God's will under 
such and such circumstances, we may gather, 
by parity of reasoning, what it will be in all 
circumstances; namely, the same when the cir- 
cumstances are the same ; analogous Avhen the 
circumstances are analogous ; and absolutely 
contrary, when they also are contrary." 

When he speaks of "commandments of eter- 
nal obligation binding on all men at all times 
alike," Dr. Arnold evidently refers to moral 
law. And when he declares that '' some com- 
mands are transitory, binding only at particular 
times," he must have in mind those which be- 
long to a particular dispensation. But what 
shall be said of those precepts which Arnold so 
fitly calls '' of indirect use to us " ? Are we not 
in broad difficulties at once when we would 
judge about how far ^' circumstances are the 
same, are analogous or absolutely contrary " ? 
But if there is a difficulty here, it is one that 
"must needs be." Besides, it is a difficulty more 
seeming than real. A regenerate heart, an hon- 
est purpose, and a careful study of the Bible, 



PRINCIPLES. 51 

are indeed required ; and these had, there is 
need of '' sanctified common-sense " in applying a 
few simple 'principles to practical life ; and then 
there can be no danger of any serious mistake. 
For these principles are very obvious, very easily 
understood, and can be instantly applied in any 
given case. 

One of these principles, so clear as almost 
to be self-evident, is the principle of pleasing 
Christ. 

Read the Epistles of the New Testament. 
Jesus has died; his body came forth from the 
grave ; men saw him ascend into the heavens ; 
and yet the writers of these Epistles constantly 
declare his presence with themselves, and as- 
sume the same with the men to whom they 
wrote. They made no claim of a bodily pres- 
ence. It was evidently impossible that Christ's 
human body should be with them in various 
places at one and the same time. Nor was it 
the merely human soul of our Lord — that 
*' which grew in wisdom" — for which these 
men claimed this omnipresence. But they cer- 



52 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

tainly did believe in an omnipresent Christ ; he 
was "with them," and '' in them." They said 
he was only in this thing fulfilling his own 
promise, '' I will manifest myself unto them." 
True for the first century of the Christian era, 
the fact is the same to-day. Our faith is not in 
a Christ now dead, but in a Christ now living. 
He said, '' I am with you unto the end of the 
world." Tliu presence of Christ — a presence 
none the less real because spiritual — is all the 
presence we need. The bodily presence added 
would be no gain ; for the Omniscient Christ 
only can meet the wants of his widely sundered 
flock. Him we have. He is the same in every 
thought and feeling as when he was here in 
bodily form. And it is not a beautiful fiction 
by which we happily impose on ourselves, but 
it is the literal and exact statement of a fact, 
when we say that Christ — not some influence 
or effluence, but Christ himself, the very 
Christ of the New Testament — is now near 
to Christians. He is pleased or displeased with 
each disciple's every act ; and hence the simple 



PRINCIPLES. 63 

and obvious principle which we lay down for 
practical Christian living, that we are to do 
those tilings and those only that will please 
Christ, 

In order to know what will please him, we 
must know " the mind of Christ." This sends 
us back to the four Gospels, which contain his 
human life. That life, in its outward aspects 
at least, all the world has now agreed to praise. 
There were infidels once ; there are none now ; 
at least there are none in name. Once men 
threw their mud at the spotless garments of 
Christ's purity; their mud would not stick. 
All now praise Jesus Christ as the perfect man. 
Those Galilean fishermen, if they invented 
such a character, have done a greater miracle 
in such an invention than any they ascribe to 
their Christ. That such men could have im- 
agined such a character, and have placed him in 
the most difficult positions, in no one of which 
does he ever fail of being the perfect man, is too 
great an absurdity to be believed. As the sun- 
light is best proof of the sun, so these four biog- 



64 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

raphies of the One who was ideally as well as 
actually perfect give proof to the world, not 
only historically but morally, that the one only 
perfect being, Jesus, has actually lived among 
men. And thousands who cannot state the 
argument feel it anew at every fresh reading of 
their New Testament. " The one perfect char- 
acter has come into our world and lived in it, 
filling all the moulds of action, all the terms of 
duty and love, with his own divine manners, 
works, and charities. All the conditions of life 
are raised by the meaning he has shown to be 
in them. The world itself is changed, and is 
no more the same it was." ^ And yet Jesus 
affects us not so much by single acts in which 
we are to give him a servile imitation. Some 
things he did we are also to do. He was in 
many an act our example, even in the outward 
form of acting. His dutifulness in his child- 
hood, his prayerfalness through life, his going 
about doing good, — all these things are ours 
for close imitation. But it is not so much as a 

i Bushnell, "Nature and the Supernatural," p. 331. 



PRINCIPLES. 55 

fixed and set mould into which our lives are to 
be run, but as a generous model, — a model in 
its principles, a model in its whole scope and 
meaning, — that the Master's life impresses us. 
Any mere outward imitation of Christ's acts 
apart from the purposes of that life would be 
only 

*^ A painted ship upon a painted ocean." 

Mechanical imitation is caricature. To wear 
Napoleon's sword about one's body is not to 
be a Napoleon. The child who thought '' Jesus 
was like our doctor because he healed the sick," 
was hardly more out of the way than many a 
grown man whose crude idea of Christ is derived 
from an outward fact or two of his life that has 
impressed his fancy or his memory. 

Perhaps the average thought of the world 
concerning Christ has come on far enough 
towards the true conception to see in him a 
person of great kindness. His benevolence, 
his unselfishness, the world is getting to own 
as that which is beneath his wonderful life, its 
root and its spring. But owning this, the world 



56 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

must ''go on towards perfection" in its idea of 
him. For that kindness was peculiar. It was 
founded in certain facts about the position of 
men which must not be ignored. The great 
object he had in view in his life, the devel- 
opment of his master-thought, his purpose, 
running through all miracle and teaching, the 
bearing of his life upon his death and his 
resurrection, and the relation of his work to 
man's salvation, — these are all to be considered. 
They show a very pecuhar mission. His work, 
in many respects, was not like ours. There 
were acts of miracle done every day which it 
would be as ridiculous as it would be impious 
for us to imitate. In many of his words he was 
alone. We may not attempt to speak as he 
spoke. And yet all these words and works 
were for us. And we are to enter into them. 
We are to imitate his devotion to his Father's 
will. We are to see the reasons for his life and 
his death. There is to be such a close sympathy 
with the objects he had in view, such a sense of 
man's great need of a Redeemer, such a union 



PRINCIPLES. 57 

with him in his outlook upon the guilt and 
danger of the race, such an appreciation of his 
sorrows, and of the reasons for them, and of 
the worth of them for man's salvation, such an 
entering into his feeling as he hung on the 
cross, that one can say, with Paul, " I am 
crucified with Christ." When one has been 
thus in feeling, in appreciation, " with Christ " 
there^ he can add, with Paul, ''I live ; yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now 
live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son 
of God." '' For me to live is Christ." The life 
culminated in the death. The death understood 
in its purpose, then, for the first time, the life is 
understood, and therefore imitated in its whole 
aim and scope. The death emphasizes the life, 
and gives us new reason as well as new motive 
for being "like Christ." Imitation ceases to be 
a matter of mere duty enjoined by rule. Con- 
science is reinforced by the heart. It is seen 
now how things little as well as things large 
maybe ''done unto the Lord." No more are 
we left to a cold admiration of a perfect char- 
3* 



58 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

acter. Jesus Clirist is no longer seen simply 
as a masterpiece of moral art. He is no lonely 
statue on a lofty pedestal extorting praise from 
those who are looking with critical eye. He is 
a man with a heart, and we feel its throbbings 
as we lean upon him. We have looked in upon 
the thought which has begotten such a life. 
AVe have seen the inner self of Christ, and not 
simply the life he lived and the grave where 
they laid him. And so, our duty before to be 
like him, it is our privilege now. His heart has 
caught our heart in the captivity of a divine 
sympathy. The beauty of holiness has a new 
charm in him. He called his followers at first 
"disciples;" then, just before his death, they 
w^ere his '^ friends ; " after his resurrection they 
were ''brethren." Then came the ascension, and 
speedily the gift of the Spirit. The ''friends," 
the " brethren," become the "Apostles." They 
are sent by him, as he was sent by the Father. 
And now it is more than mere aesthetic sympathy 
that they feel, as, enlightened by the Spirit, they 
look back and see new meaning in every word 



PRINCIPLES. 59 

and act of the Lord. Tliey are one with him. 
They live for the end for which he died. Their 
new work as Apostles differs in form but not in 
spirit from his earthly life. '^ Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do ? " is the key-note not only 
of the convert's life, but of the Apostle's service. 
And as then, so now, discipleship has no higher 
ambition nor sweeter joy than '' to do always 
those things that please him." All our thinking 
is to be run in the mould of his thought ; our 
outlook on men is to be as if through his eyes ; 
we are to hear as he would hear the voices of 
want and sorrow ; and mind and heart and hand 
are never better used than when w^e are asking 
what he would have done had he been here 
with us ; nay, what he who u with us desires 
us to do. 

Nor is there any loss of this sympathy when 
the higher nature of our Lord is remembered. 
Alone, the thought of the Great God might 
overawe. The old Greek met the Christian of 
the new religion with the plea that the doctrine 
of "one God" was unsympathetic. The one 



60 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

God must be so far above us and so far away 
that lie could not be the companion of man's 
nearer life. He could not, so thought the Greek, 
take the place of the gods who inhabited every 
stream, and dwelt in every mountain and valley, 
whose breath was in every wind that blew, who 
guided the sun in his course, and who were also 
the household gods in every home. Vainly the 
Christian answered the Greek that the Almighty 
God, the Omniscient God, the Omnipresent God, 
in whom he believed, was also and always, of 
necessity, near to every thing and to every being. 
The feeling remained, as of distance, as of a 
greatness too great for actual sympathy. Not 
till the Christian unfolded to the Greek the 
doctrine of Christ as '' God manifest in the 
flesh " was his hearer satisfied. God revealed 
in humanity was God revealed in the nearest 
way. There is no distance either in fact or feel- 
ing when God is revealed '' in the flesh." The 
simple fitness of such a revelation for the very 
purposes of sympathy is evident. Mingling with 
the reverence we feel only for God himself, is 



PRINCIPLES. 61 

that dear sense of nearness and oneness with 
him who " took our nature." He has manifested 
himself elsewhere. " The invisible things of 
Him from the creation of the world are clearly 
seen." But the manifestation in human thought 
through manhood is the nearest to us. Christ 
takes up our thought, and we in turn take up 
his. Nothing is lost from the human by the 
gain of the divine sympathy. For the twofold 
nature of Christ has always a single conscious- 
ness. He is one person. We have ''one Lord." 
And this ''mystery of godliness" is no mere 
theme for theologians to examine at their leisure. 
Nor yet is it simply and only a devout meditation 
for the "still hour" of closet devotion. It bears 
directly on the practical work of Christian living. 
For our Lord went out and in among men. He 
kept himself in with the common workers of 

his day. 

*' No stern recluse, 
As his forerunner ; but the Guest and Friend 
Of all who sought him, mingling with all life 
To breathe his holiness on all. No film 
Obscured his spotless lustre. From his lips 
Truth limpid without error flowed. Disease 



62 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

Fled from his touch. Pain heard him and was not. 

Despair smiled in his presence. Devils knew 

And trembled. In the omnipotence of faith 

Uniutermittent, indefectible, 

Leaning upon his Father's might, he bent 

All nature to his will. The tempter sank. 

He whispering, into a w^aveless calm. The bread 

Given from his hands fed thousands and to spare. 

The stormy waters as the solid rock, 

Were pavement for his footstep. Death itself 

With vain reluctancies yielded its prey 

To the stern mandates of the Prince of Life.'' ^ 

And this Christ, who was himself in the world, 
and who felt once the chafings of its care and 
the friction of its work, is the Christ now with 
us. The hymn which owns his presence is not 
only for Easter-morning, but for every^ work-day 
morning, as the soul sings, — 

'' I say to all men far and near, 
That he is risen again; 
That he is witli us, now and hei^e, 
And ever shall remain." 

The obligation to please Christ is further 
enforced by the sense of personal gratitude. 
We owe every thing to this Saviour. Much as 

1 E. H. Bickersteth, " Yesterday, To-day, and Forever." 



PRINCIPLES, 63 

we may admire his example and sympathize 
with his object in visiting our world, there is a 
part of his work in which he stood sublimely 
alone. Tears have flowed at the foot of the 
cross, and martyrs' blood has been shed by those 
who loved the Lord. But only liu blood has been 
shed in atonement. " He trod the wine-press 
alone." " Every drop of my blood thanks you," 
said the liberated prisoner, who had been saved 
from death by the efforts of a kindly man. 
Personal gratitude is one of the strong impulses 
of a generous soul. No familiarity can take the 
rich meaning out of the hjann sung wherever 
the English language is spoken, — 

*' Were the whole realm of nature mine, 
That were a present far too small: 
Love so amazing, so divine, 

Demands my soul, my life, my all." 

It is noticeable that the Bible never uses the 
word Christianity. It could not do it. It is 
contmry to its whole idea. In New-Testament 
times, even as now, the convert '' finds Christ," 
not Christianity. Should one come talking of 



64 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

finding Christianity true, we should distrust him. 
We should fear that the heart was lagging be- 
hind the head. The head may say Christianitj^, 
but the heart says Christ. Paul speaks of his 
conversion as God's " revealing his Son unto 
him." Something of this takes place in every 
conversion, A new personal relation is estab- 
lished with Christ. He who was born in the 
manger is in a sense born anew in every con- 
vert's heart. The historical Christ becomes the 
present Christ. The astonishment of faith once 
more says, '' My Lord and my God." 

Mingling with this gratitude is another feeling 
which prompts also to please Christ. There are 
men who know that thej^ love him. This is more 
than aesthetic appreciation. It is deeper even 
than gratitude. Love takes in all else, and goes 
further than them all. A man may be as certain 
of loving Christ as of loving wife or child. Love 
is born in a mother's heart with her babe ; and 
the love of Christ is given at the soul's entrance 
into the kingdom of God. The aesthetic feeling 
that appreciates the general perfection of Christ's 



PRINCIPLES. 65 

character belongs to allivhose tastes are cultured. 
But love is heart-born. It is at once a principle 
and a passion. It has steadiness and it has ardor. 
The measure of love, as a principle, is always its 
desire to please the one loved. Sacrifices are 
readily made, one's own ease or pleasure is sur- 
rendered, that the person loved may be grati- 
fied. And love has its glow as well as its steady 
strength. The warm heart tides one over the 
places where strength alone would be only fail- 
ure. The enthusiasm of love, directed by good 
sense and sustained by holy principle, has made 
men victors in the severest trials, as they have 
grasped the banner and pressed forward in '^the 
name of the Lord." Love always imitates. It 
copies almost unconsciously not only the tones 
in the voice, but the very modes in the thought 
and feeling of the one loved. He is a model ; 
and love has him ever in mind. Who has not 
seen in a family the husband becoming more 
gentle and the wife more strong and self-reliant 
by the companionship of years. Their love makes 
them unconscious imitators. What now if one 

E 



66 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

or both of them shall take Christ as a companion 
and friend ; shall think every day of him as one 
always near, and shall come to refer daily action 
to his wish and will, asking, '' Lord, what wilt 
thou have me to do ? " Can this be done without 
a potent influence upon the whole interior and 
exterior life ? 

But life has its shado\7S as well as its sunshine. 
There are valleys as well as mountain-tops. To 
suffer is sometimes to serve. Patience and for- 
titude are Christian graces, the lustre of which 
shines like that of stars of the first magnitude in 
a night otherwise one of deepest darkness. And 
sometimes a Christian, by the spirit in which he 
has borne a sorrow, by the evident grace that 
has sustained him, has compelled men to do 
homage to the gospel of his Saviour. Men have 
said nothing but religion could have made him 
take his trial in that way. A missionary mother 
stood on the shore where she was to take leave 
of her children. They were going back to her 
American home that they might be educated 
apart from heathen influences. She printed one 



PRINCIPLES. 67 

last foncl kiss on their faces wet with the tears 
of parting, then lifted tip her eyes to heaven 
and said, '^ O Jesus, I do this for thee." And 
back to her toil, to hft her dusky-hued sisters 
into the light and love of the gospel, she went, 
and the thought in her heart was that the 
Master was pleased with the sacrifices she had 
made. Said another Christian, " I have been 
a follower of Christ for more than forty years. 
I have always felt in my days of trouble that 
Jesus had met the same form of trial, and so 
there has been between us the fellowship of 
sorrow. I lost property ; but I felt that I Avas the 
nearer to him who left heaven's riches for me. 
I buried friends ; and felt, then, that I was in a 
sense one with him who wept at the grave of 
Lazarus. And now I am stricken with blindness. 
At first I was in the deepest distress because I 
had come, as I thought, into a place where he 
could not sympathize with me : for he had never 
been blind. But there came to me one day the 
text, ' they blindfolded him ; ' and Christ and 
I were one again. Blindness even, if so only I 



68 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

could be one with him, was a blessing. If this 
trial pleased him, it was all right. And I knew 
he would be pleased if I took the trial trustfully, 
and should thus ' suffer wdth him.' " 

We look with admiring praise upon the 
spectacle of earthly affection. We all give the 
benediction of our ^' best wishes " to those w^ho 
go forth with marriage-vows freshly spoken. 
We call them lovers. But what is their love 
now compared with what it will be when they 
have taken life's trials together; when they have 
rejoiced over the cradle and wept over the grave 
of their children ! Blessings on the old loves ! 
Blessings on the frosty heads that carry with 
them hearts warmer, richer, riper than when 
they started hand-in-hand in their marriage-life I 
The love for each other that has grown Avith 
their years, that has become more tender and 
tremulous as they have shared each other's sor- 
rows and doubled each other's joys is a dehght- 
ful thing. And when we see some ripe, mellow 
Christian, who has lived closely with Christ, 
whose piety has gone on so far into its rich 



PRINCIPLES. 69 

autumnal fruitage, that, like '' holy Rutherford," 
he can revel in the '' Song of Songs, which is 
Solomon's," and can speak of Christ constantly 
as '' My Beloved ; " who can use these figures 
that to coarser souls would be s&nsuous, while 
he finds in them the hidden sweetness, the honey 
in the rock ; who can, with no irreverence, take 
up the fondest words of the very abandonment 
of spiritual love in these ''Canticles," — how 
beautiful is the sight ! 

But one comes to this Beuhih-land only by 
the way of previous '' walking with God." Such 
fruits are not '' tied to the bough." They must 
grow. They hang only on well-rooted and thrifty 
trees. To come to this latter, there must be an 
eariier experience. In the daj's of spring and 
summer there must be Christian living, if there 
is to be this autumnal splendor of serene piety. 
And this Christian living cannot be so much an 
outward imitation of our Lord's life as an attempt 
to transfuse that life into ours, — to express his 
wish in our act. It is a very great thing to say 
with Paul, '' Christ liveth in me." Far more is 



70 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

this than to say merely that we try to be like 
him. Another ^' lives in us" only as we drop 
our personal ways of thinking, judging, and 
feeling, and as we act out his j)rineiples. To 
do this, a man is to ask, '' what Christ would 
have done were he here, and were he in my 
place, with my duty and my work." It is not 
what he would do were he here now as the 
appointed Redeemer of men. For we know 
what he did when on earth. But this is another 
thing. It is an inquiry of what he, '' the man 
Christ Jesus,'' would do if he had had only a 
common man's common mission ; if he were 
appointed to push the plane, or pound the iron, 
or stand behind the counter, or handle the pen, 
or sit in the professor's chair or the student's 
seat, or practice at the bar, or cure men's bodies, 
or stand in a nineteenth century pulpit. Trans- 
late his principles and his spirit into your life as 
lived in your circumstances, and let this thing 
be done with reference to every act in business 
and social life, — and that is to ''live the life 
you now live by faith on the Son of God;" it 



PRINCIPLES. 71 

is to say, '' Christ livetli in me." One may be 
perplexed about rules ; the mere wording of 
some precept may look another way ; one may 
be in honest doubt about the right or the wrong 
ef a certain line of conduct; but if one will 
bring it here to this test, to this rule that has 
in it the spirit of all rules, — what will please 
Christy — the doubt will usually depart. Asking 
what he would have done in just our place, with 
just our mission and duties, the matter, espe- 
cially if we have become thoroughly acquainted 
with our New Testament, will be ordinarily very 
plain. 

And it is something very wonderful, — this 
growing consciousness of a mutual friendship 
between Christ and one's own soul. We get 
beyond the mere talk about Christ as our Elder 
Brother, and into the feeling that this relation 
is a very real thing ; is no beautiful fancy, but a 
very actual fact. And as he has been doing and 
is doing for us, so we get not only into the doing 
but into' the hahit of doing for him. Says another, 
" We may do more for this Friend (Christ) than 



72 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

for any other. In your friendship and love, your 
greatest trial oftentimes is that you cannot do for 
those j^ou love all that you desire. How often 
do we hear of those whom we greatly love and 
respect as being in trouble, but we are not at 
liberty to tell them how much we feel and how 
much we would rejoice to do in their behalf. 
Now there is not a friend, nor one whom you 
would feel honored to call your friend, who 
would esteem your greatest favors so much as 
Christ would to receive from you a cup of cold 
water. While there are bedsides and chambers 
where we cannot come, we can nevertheless visit 
Christ in his sickness ; we can go to him without 
waiting to be sent for; in prison, we can befriend 
him ; a stranger, we can minister unto him. We 
can live for Christ; we can bring 'presents to 
him,' large or small, or in the form of any thing 
valuable to us, and it will not fail to be acceptable 
and valuable to him. We may contend with him 
in love, and say that it is a crowning joy that 
he permits us to do for him all we desire, that 



PRINCIPLES. 73 

he accepts that desire when the ability is incon- 
siderable, and that he is pleased to give, as the 
reason for his acceptance of us at the great day, 
our poor but affectionate testimonies of love to 
him." 1 

Of model men the world has had a sufficiency. 
There have been model men in war, in art, in 
science, in literature, in statesmanship. They 
have stood up and apart from their fellows. 
They have had renown. Their names are called 
with reverence. But Christ was more than a 
moral model. He gets homage, but he gets love 
with it. The world's verdict makes him the one 
perfect man. Bat, strangely enough, in his case 
this perfection, so far from separating, brings him 
closer to our hearts. He prevails by his love 
against our natural selfishness. And many of 
the race count it alike their honor and their joy 
to call themselves by his name. And they are 
asldng not only about his doctrine that they may 
satisfy the truth-loving intellect, and his grace 

1 Adams, "Friends of Christ." 



74 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

that they may have him dwell in them '' the 
hope of glory," but they are striving to please 
him alike in the devotions of the closet and the 
activities of the busy world. 



PRINCIPLES. 



1. The Peinciple of Duty to One's Self. 

2. The Broad View of Body, Mind, and Soul. 

3. The Capacity for the Spiritual Life. 

4. Personal Development. 



IV. 

THE DUTY TO ONE'S SELF. 

"'TpHOU shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. ^^ 
Self, then, is to be regarded ; nay, is to 
be loved. Others also ; but others ''as thyself." 
So, again, in the Golden Rule we are taught, 
'' Whatsoever ye would that others should do to 
you^ do ye even so to them." Duty to one's 
self is thus made a measure of duty to others. 
It is a high and solemn duty to love one's self 
purely, truly, nobly ; to regard one's own high- 
est interests ; to take up our life-work with 
broad views of the dignity and destiny of one's 
own being ; to look upon ourselves as those who 
have responsibilities such as are laid only on 
creatures made in the "image of God." 

We are to distinguish clearly and carefully 
this self-love from selfishness. The one is a 
duty commended, the other a vice forbidden. 



T8 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

In a fine sentence of Mackintosh, he gives us 
incidentally the sharp difference between the 
two. '' Selfishness is a vice utterly at variance 
with the happiness of him who harbors it; and 
as such it is condemned by self-love." Selfish- 
ness would trample on every right of God or 
man to gain its ends. But a true self-love seeks 
its joys within the pale of right, assured that in 
duty there is happiness. It asks what is best, 
on the whole, for one's self; it prizes one's 
self, neither imdervaluing nor overvaluing one's 
place or powers. Men may think too exclu- 
sively of self, but none can think too much, too 
highly ; none can overvalue the gift of powers 
which, if less in degree, are the same in kind 
with those of the Creator. 

We need to exercise a noble regard for our- 
selves, — our whole selves,— body, mind, and 
soul. 

This principle of duty to one's self has respect 
to the hody. We are fearfully and wonderfully 
made. There is no piece of human mechanism 
that can compare with this workmanship of 



PRINCIPLES, 79 

God in our bodily frame. No matter where you 
begin the examination ; no matter what organ 
you take up for your study, simple amazement 
is always the result. You are amazed at the 
delicacy and strength, at the order and yet the 
freedom ! The eye has taught man to make his 
telescope. But man's nicest work, when he has 
spent years in polishing a single lens, is clumsy 
compared with any common eye. The ear, so 
delicate to distinguish the shades of a tone, so 
nice to detect the quality that belongs to each 
human voice ; its compass running from the 
faintest pulsations of a whisper up to the deto- 
nations of the thunders that shake the very 
earth, — what a marvel it is! And each organ 
of the body is complete. And there is, too, the 
completeness of the whole mass of them. There 
are distinct systems, — the nervous, the muscu- 
lar, the respiratory, the circulatory ; each mys- 
teriously perfect, and all harmoniously combined 
in the one living being. And through this 
body, which, after all, is not for itself, the mind 
and the soul are to manifest their powers. Its 



80 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

health permits, its disease hinders the soul that 
would use this body as an instrument by which 
a part of its own work is to be done. It will 
not do to neglect the body which is so skilfully 
made, and is so easily harmed ; and which, 
when harmed, harms all the rest of the man. 
That is a narrow view of religion which pro- 
poses to care much for the soul and little for 
the body ; for the body is God's workmanship 
as well as the soul. The body is, moreover, to 
be immortal. Death touches it only as death 
touches the corn of wheat which falls into the 
earth and dies only that it may bring forth fruit 
in the appointed hour of harvest. Beyond the 
resurrection, the body lives again. This cor- 
ruptible must put on incorruption. For what 
it is as God's work, for what it is to us, for what 
it is to be, we must value the body. Its laws 
are to be understood. A part, and a larger 
part than many think, of one's religious duty 
is to care for this phj^sical frame. It is to be 
valued, not despised. He who neglects it does 
it at his peril. A sound body is a priceless gift, 



PRINCIPLES. 81 

and when given is to be used and not abused. 
Many a sad mood of the soul comes from a dis- 
eased body. More than one man's religious per- 
plexities and confusion have been due to a 
dyspeptic stomach. If the body were but a beast 
of burden to carry us over the journey, it would 
be well to use it wisely, feeding it neither too 
little nor too much, urging it never so as to harm 
it in the end, nor so pampering it that it should 
lose all power of service. But the body is more 
than the beast of burden on which we ride. An 
important part of ourselves, we are to care for 
it with a genuine regard, making the most of its 
senses, educating them to sharpness, so that we 
may be alive to many a thing in the world about 
us which others, because of undeveloped pow- 
ers, fail to notice. It is a dutj^ to get the most 
out of the world through one's cultured senses. 
No spring with its fresh growths, nor summer 
with its laughing scenes, nor autumn with its 
ripe splendor of fruitage or of landscape, is to 
pass over us without adding to our stores from 

the things unseen in former years. We are to 
4* F 



82 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

see a new beauty in the starry heaven of the 
winter's night ; a new glory in the white vapor- 
ous masses that go sailing through the sky in 
the slow, still days of mid-autumn ; a new gran- 
deur in the thick heavy folds of the dark tempest 
cloud blown on and up into the central fields of 
the sky in the heated summer afternoon. And 
each year a man is to be more alive not only 
to the mere beauty or grandeur of the world, 
but to God's thought spoken in each thing. 
There is a reason why one thing differs from 
another. It is ours not only to know the 
thing, but the underlying thought. For these 
things are the alphabet that expresses the Di- 
vine mind. 

Nor must we forget that many a mood of the 
soul is best amended through the bodily senses. 
From the time when Israel's king drove from 
himself an evil spirit until now, the strains of 
music have had for some men a singular power. 
The spirit has been stirred or calmed, debased 
or exalted, by the tones that have come to the 
bodily ear. The wonderful power of sacred song 



PRINCIPLES. 83 

is not alone in the words, it is also in the tones 
of the music ; it is in the harmony and melody 
that touch the outward, and so go singing on to 
the inward ear. It is not enough that one read 
the same sentiment in prose. It is not enough 
that the harmony of the numbers be exquisitely 
given in the finished reading or recitation. 
Songs are to be sung. The tones of music, of 
part blending with part, that indefinable union 
of sounds that we call harmony, is needed to 
produce the full effect. '' Singing to yourselves 
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs," 
Paul says to a church whom he would have 
happy '' in the Lord." And as some through 
the ear, so others through the eye, have been 
able to calm a perturbed spirit. The long- 
drawn breath has steadied the faltering nerve 
and quieted the agitation of the soul. The 
tonic of the air on the sea-shore, the clear dry 
breezes among the hills have invigorated the 
worn frame, and the Christian has gone back to 
his work feeling sure that his vacation hours 
were not lost time. In the better care for his 



84 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

body lie has better fitted himself for the duties 
he owes to God and to his fellow-men. 

The artist who has studied the rules of 
painting or of sculpture is afterwards able, it 
may be, to 

'* Snatch a grace beyond the reach of art." 

So, over and above the knowledge of general 
physiology and hygiene, there is a peculiar 
physiology and hygiene that each man is to 
make up and use for himself. There are 
things that he can do which some cannot ; and 
there are indulgences which he cannot permit 
to himself without harm. The coffee, a health- 
ful stimulant to one man, is almost a poison to 
another. Drank at an evening gathering, it is 
sure to bring a night's unrest, and feverishness 
and irritability on the following day. The late 
supper that one carries off easily, will disqualify 
his friend for to-morrow's business or devotion. 
The narcotic which one takes with no present 
sense of harm, but which always subtracts from 
human life, and the use of which can be defended 
only on the plea of habit, is not a seemly thing 



PRINCIPLES. 85 

for Christian lips. How ask others to leave the 
habit of taking the wine cup when one is him- 
self a slave to the tobacco habit ! A man is to 
honor his body. Through it, as his instrument 
held under firm control, he is to do his life-work 
out in the world. He is to find out how best to 
use it ; what it needs anji does not need ; what 
of activity or of repose it must have to do the 
work to which he puts it ; what food, in kind, 
in quantity, is best for him as brain-worker 
or worker with the hand. And so he is to 
be an artist in the high art of caring for the 
body which God has made, and which, when 
made, God has given him to prize and honor, 
to nourish and develop, to train, and, when 
trained, to use not as a beast of burden, but 
as a sacred part of his own being. 

And this broad duty to one's self includes, 
also, care for the mind. There must be no 
materialism in our view of the mind if we are 
to respect ourselves at all. The body cannot 
be resolved into the mind, as some would fain 
do. No more can the mind be resolved into 



86 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

the body, as some naturalists of eminence 
would have us believe. The metaphysician 
would see only thought ; the naturalist, only 
matter. Both theories of man are equally hos- 
tile to religion. An eminent scientist has lately 
expressed the hope ''that we shall soon find a 
mechanical equivalent for consciousness." On 
the ground of self-respect, we hope that this 
may never be. As against the metaphysician, 
we insist that the body is more than his idea 
of it. As against the naturalist, we insist that 
there are mental facts that his retort and scalpel 
cannot touch. Each class of facts stands on its 
own unmoved foundation. The philosophers 
who once denied the existence of matter have 
retreated from the absurdity of pushing their 
sj^stem to cover all the facts about the complex 
being we call man. They have been willing 
to allow that there is something outside their 
specialty. And the naturalists, later in the 
field, and attempting just as vainly as did the 
metaph3'^sicians to cover all the broad ground 
with one department of anthropology, will be 



PRINCIPLES, 87 

compelled soon to follow the same course. If, 
indeed, it can be shown that successive eras of 
creation exhibit progress as matter is more and 
more sublimated in connection with the higher 
forms of the animal creation; if it can be shown 
that the process advances until, in its highest 
reach, there is found physical substance fit for a 
body which is to be the tabernacle of a human 
soul, still there is the amazing gap between the 
highest form of matter and the lowest form of 
human consciousness. It is a gap so broad that 
no transition from the one to the other is possi- 
ble ; for neither has a single quality or attribute 
in common. One has hardness or softness; is 
weighed by balances or measured by the yard ; 
is of this or the other color ; is touched by the 
hand and seen by the eye. The other has its 
thoughts and feelings, loves and hates, its desire 
and will ; its reasonings about what is true ; its 
conscience about what is right ; is known to us 
by the self within us, and is seen by the soul's 
eye turned inward and examining one's own 
central and essential consciousness. These two 



88 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

parts of ourself, so totally unlike in every 
quality, are held together by him who made 
us. The link of their union is hidden in his 
hand, and by the very terms of the union it 
cannot be understood by us. It is the charac- 
teristic of a healthy mind, in the presence of a 
fact which by the very terms of its existence is 
inscrutable to us as finite beings, not to hold it 
with any the less reverence or certainty because 
of that mystery. We believe in God. We be- 
lieve also in man " made in the image of God." 
But as to the mode of existence both of God 
and of man there is always mystery. 

'^ Reverenee thyself," was the motto of the 
ancient learning. It savors of pride for one to 
say it who does not also say " reverence God." 
Never is man so great as when we see him not 
alone, but leaning on God, — the sonship related 
to the fatherhood. In reaching our highest 
knowledge of him we climb by the way of our 
powers as men. Divine attribute, in our concep- 
tion, is the expansion of human faculty. Else 
how our idea of God ? Great are the acliieve- 



PRINCIPLES. 89 

ments of the human mind. Man has gone down 
deep into the earth. He has pointed the artillery 
of astronomical invention towards the very skies 
from a thousand observatories all over the earth. 
He has mapped out the heavens and thrown the 
lines of gigantic boundary from star to star and 
from sun to sun. He is the Lord of the world. 
He has given names to the beasts of the field and 
to the birds of the air and to the fish of the sea. 
He can even '' call the stars his own." " Thou 
madest him to have dominion over all the works 
of thy hands: thou hast put all things under 
his feet : all beasts of the field and whatsoever 
passeth through the paths of the seas." 

And how does this pure and large self-regard 
stand related to that part of our nature that we 
call the soul ? This is our crowning glory. We 
have in this soul the powers for doing the 
highest form of moral worh^ — work akin to the 
highest work done by our God. This sense of 
the right that is in every man is as really a fact 
as is the sense of seeing or of feeling ; this whole 
vast world of thought and emotion expressed by 



90 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

that grandest of all words, the word ougTit^ when 
a man says, " I ought to do this or that thing," 

— these moral ideas are our birthright as men 
with souls. Herein lies our solemn responsibility. 
The soul is regal as to the body. And among 
the soul's powers conscience is king by a divine 
right. All else in body and soul must bow to it. 
But it neyer is to bow to them. It is to keep 
its allegiance solely for its God. 

And now we are prepared for one great ques- 
tion. What is all this wondrous and perfect 
combination of powers intended to accomplish? 
What is man for ? These powers do not exist 
merely for themselves. The machine does not 
run for the sake of running. There is an end 
to be gained. What is it ? These powers are 
not simply to be used, but to be used in a certain 
way. The right use of them, for the right ends, 

— if we can know that, then we can say why 
man was made and what man is to do. 

Let us open the Bible. Over and over again 
we find a certain word, — the word life. What 
does it mean ? In nature, a tree is alive when it 



PRINCIPLES, 91 

does what it was made to do. And it is dead 
when it feels not responsively the call of the 
sun and the rain in the spring-time, when it puts 
forth no leaf in summer. It i^ay exist as a thing 
when it is no longer alive. So of the human 
Ijody, when it is doing the work a body ought 
to do, it is alive. When the heart ceases to 
beat, and the breath to come and go, and the 
eye to see, and the ear to hear, when no function 
is performed, it is still a body, but it is a dead 
body. In the same way a man's mind may be 
called dead to this or that class of subjects in 
which it takes no interest. The mind exists for 
other things. It is dead to these. In the same 
way the soul has powers. They always exist ; 
for it is of their nature to live as it is of the 
nature of an eye to see. But there may be whole 
classes of facts to which the soul is dead, and 
these may be the very things in view of which 
it was especially to act. The mere organism of 
the soul is imperishable. Its faculties have no 
grave in which they can be laid. But it can 
perish from the kind of life it was to have : it 



92 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

can cease from doing what God made it to do. 
Its faculties may exist when its moral life — its 
proper action towards things right and holy — 
has ceased. In this sense the Bible speaks of 
men as '' dead " and as '' alive." And here comes 
ont that grand and rich use of the word life. 
And here, too, there rises on us the answer to 
the question which we have asked as to what 
is to be done to develop all these vast powers 
of man. These powers are for the spiritual 
life. 

Let us be sure that we understand what is 
meant by the spiritual life. It is vastly more 
than the mere possession of spiritual powers. 
These exut^ even when they work wrongly or 
do not work at all. No part of a man may be 
dead in the sense of ceasing to be, and yet every 
part may be dead in the sense of not being or 
doing as God would have the man to be or to 
do. Nothing else but this kind of life can fill 
out to their roundness the powers God has 
given. Apart from this no man can do the best 
for himself. Apart from this every faculty must 



PRINCIPLES. 93 

be dwarfed from its designed stature. This 
spiritual life is the one thing needful. 

And when this thing is clearly seen, a man 
becomes anxious to obtain this boon. Painful is 
the discovery of one's need of this inward life. 
It is humiliating to find that one has never had 
the right view of the great object of existence ; 
that one is in need of that inward disposition 
which prompts him to use rightly his own being, 
— in need of a new heart, a regeneration, a life 
from the dead. By one's own reason and con- 
science, by the faculties which belong to his 
nature, a man can judge whether this spiritual 
life is in his soul. If not, no duty can be so 
central, so important, as to seek it. Nor need 
our search be long. Close to us, in this gospel 
day, there stands one who is the giver of 
spiritual life. '' I am come that they might 
have life, and that they might have it more 
abundantly." He who said '' I am the Truth" 
said also, " I am the Life." Through him is the 
gift of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, ''that which 
is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is 



94 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

born of the Spirit is spirit." And so it comes to 
be true that as a soul beheves, doing thus its 
work, the Holy Spirit regenerates, doing thus 
his work. And yet our work of faith is also 
done under the Spirit's impulse, so that the 
whole work is a spiritual work. And in this 
experience of '' entering into the kingdom of 
God," what a sense of the soul's worth is 
developed ! A man's soul then seems to him 
to be his all. It is his capital for eternit}^ 
That unsaved, vainly are there promises of 
an eternal joy. In that hour, when mightily 
moved upon by God's Holy Spirit, a man prizes 
his own soul; he begins to value himself. A 
great God, a great Saviour, and a great redemp- 
tion are truths that go well with that of a great 
soul. And this sense of the value of one's own 
soul comes not from any new cataloguing of its 
powers, but from the sense of the great work 
given a human soul to do on earth, as it is here 
to prepare for an immortal destiny. And this 
spiritual life once obtained is to be carefully 
preserved. Self-preservation is one of the prin- 



PRINCIPLES. 95 

ciples that overrides every thing else. Done in 
self-defence, the blow that else v^ere a murderous 
blow is not only guiltless of blame, but it may 
even be commendable. If another threatens 
my life I must resist him. I must at any cost 
preserve my own. But can any man show cause 
why the same law does not hold Avith reference 
to this spiritual life ? I defend my dwelling 
against the midnight burglar. Shall I take no 
pains to defend my soul against the miscreant 
thought of evil that would come into my inner 
home and rob me of my soul's peace ? And so 
in this law of ^elf -'preservation there is another 
test of what a Christian may or may not do. . 
Does this course of reading, does the other 
course of pleasures, does that plan of social life 
which many claim is innocent, and which has the 
sanction of good men, — does any one of these 
things harm the inward spiritual life ? Is one 
less inclined to read God's Word, to prayer, to 
the whole line of private and public religious du- 
ties thereby? That is enough. There is danger 
there. Either the thing is wrong in kind or in 



96 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

degree. There is no fit treatment for any foe to 
the spiritual life, but to thrust it out. Better be 
too strict, better miss here and there a permitted 
pleasure, than to be injured in the hidden life. 
For to retain 'Hhe peace of God" in the soul is 
the very first thing. " If thy right hand offend 
thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee : for it is 
profitable for thee that one of thy members should 
perish, and not that thy whole body should be 
cast into hell." A broad and wise self-regard 
says to the Christian that anything that disturbs, 
dwarfs, injures, in any way, this precious inward 
life, is by that very fact a sin, and it must be re- 
fused, repulsed, forbidden; and this prohibition 
is just as forcible a command for one's soul as 
if written out in full in the decalogue. Nor are 
our ordinary worldly cares hostile to our best 
religious life. Nor is the necessary business in 
which hand or brain is called to act a hindrance 
to this spiritual growth. '' Earthly care may be 
a heavenly blessing." But the whole brood of 
worldly pleasures, of doubtful pursuits, of enter- 
prises that are obviously on the edge of evil, if 



PRINCIPLES. 97 

not over that edge, — these things that we would 
not care to face in the honesty of closet devotion 
are all wrong when we adjudge them by the sim- 
ple and positive rule of avoiding what will hinder 
the growth of the spiritual life. Another man 
might be able to do an act with no detriment 
to his spiritual life that would be for harm to my 
religious welfare. As there are some substances 
that, taken into the stomach, are always and in 
every case poisonous, and as there are other 
substances always and in every case nutritious, 
so it is in the soul. There are acts always to be 
condemned. There are acts always to be done. 
But between the two there is a vast debatable 
ground. And here, what is right and what is 
wrong is to be decided, in part at least, by the 
tendency of an act to harm or help the higher 
life. We are to watch that " no man take our 
crown." 

And the principle of self-regard is not only 
our defence against foes, but our help in an 
offensive warfare. We are under duty of Belf- 
development. These powers are not only to be 



98 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

kept intact from evil, but to become sharpened 
by practice of the good. The seed is to have 
not only place to sprout and lift up itself from 
the soil, but the sapling is to have room to be 
the giant oak. None of us should measure the 
spiritual life, saying about it that it can be only 
thus and so on earth. There is vastlv more to 
be gained than we may at first be ready to allow. 
Out upon the prairie goes the settler, selecting 
lands that are in their undisturbed wildness. 
They are only waste lands now. With difficulty 
he makes his first clearing. Early and late he 
labors. Each season shows an advance. His 
early clearing in a few years is enlarged in every 
direction ; until at last he stands up, and, as far 
as eye can reach, are seen his broad acres rich 
in the golden-headed wheat. And what has he 
done in all this but simply to reclaim wa^te 
land? Is* there no Avaste mind that needs a 
similar treatment? Are there not thousands 
of men with undisciplined minds, with hearts 
in which there grow only the rank weeds of 
worldliness, hearts in which there is room, could 



PRINCIPLES, 99 

the reclaiming grace of God be brought to 
them, for rich harvests of that grain that is 
for the heavenly garner. And as each man 
looks over his own soul, takes the inventory of 
his own powers, estimates at its true value the 
culture he has given them, inquires as to his 
skilled use of them in noble moral work, has 
he not reason, in the sincere regret he must 
feel for the past, and in the possibilities open 
to him in the future, to devote himself, body, 
mind, and soul, more fully to that service of 
God which is the best development of all the 
powers of man ? 

And is there anywhere else a true develop- 
ment and expansion of one's self? How else 
than through God's touch of us and our recog- 
nition of him can we make the most and best of 
self ? How sad the sight of a man with royal 
powers and no sense of what they are and of 
what he may do with them I He has not the 
"steeds well in hand." They may either not 
go at all, or they may dash headlong over some 
precipice. How many lives there are that seem 



100 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

left to accident, — lives that have no force, 
or, if any force, it is misdirected, — lives that 
are wind-born and wave-driven, that roll and 
drift on the latest surge ! And there are 
narrow lives, that lack the breadth of view 
which takes in God and eternity. In such 
narrow and merely secular lives, one hour spent 
with God would broaden consciousness more 
than any thing else. Souls, in order to the 
fulness of their own faculty, must be receptive 
of God, — of the power of the thought of him, 
and of the Holy Spirit which he bestows on 
those that seek him. We know our own spirits 
only as we know him who is the " Father of 
spirits." Then we feel the family relation, and 
thus come to know who and what we are. Only 
as we know him do we come to know how great 
a thing it is to have an immortal soul. One 
may be able to name all the soul's powers ; to 
state the most advanced theories of the science 
of man. And yet this is only the intellectual 
knowledge of our moral powers. But the moral 
knowledge — the soul's knowledge of soul — is 



PRINCIPLES. 101 

known only as we see the soul's duty and capa- 
city ''in the light of God." One is no more 
puny and insignificant. A ^oul is the grandest 
thing now, after God. The thought of the vast- 
ness of the material universe and the minuteness 
of man before the majesty of nature in her up- 
lifted mountains, her broad oceans, her heavens 
studded thick with innumerable stars and with 
systems of vast elaboration, — these things once 
were oppressive. But now the really oppressive 
thing is a soul., and this soul one's own soul. 
For those are without us; but this is the very 
self within one's self. Those things are of coarse 
material; this of the finest. They are to pass 
away ; this never. They will crumble and not 
know it; but this shall know if harm comes; 
and, knowing that harm comes only by sin, the 
soul can avoid it through the grace of God. 

Who has not seen tliis uplifting of the whole 
man, — this new sense of the worth of a human 
being, — as he has seen a convert struggling into 
God's kingdom ? Why ! sometimes there has 
been almost a new dignity to the very step, a 



102 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

new light in the eye, a new valuation of self 
as before God. The man who had vegetated 
before, begins now to live. It is almost as if 
he had just come into possession of a soul, and 
gloried in the newly-found dignity. In the act 
of becoming a Christian he has become a man; 
for the true manhood of a man is found in bemg 
a '' son of God." And, while other ways of 
coming to prize one's self, the ways of study or 
of comparison, give one breadth without depth 
or height, this kind of knowledge of self, tlds 
gospel method, gives growth in every direction. 
It gives the upward growth ; for it sets God 
before us, and turns every outreaching tendril 
of human desire towards him, as the one by 
whom we may be lifted up into the purer sun- 
light of the heaven Avhere he dwells. It gives 
depth to one's development. We are filled 
with humility ; we are bowed in penitence under 
a sense of sin; we cry unclean; we go down 
into the depths ; we see our deserts ; we learn 
that only such mercy as God has shown in Jesus 
can save such sinners as ourselves. We get a 



PRINCIPLES. 103 

sight of the singular workings of sin in us. 
There are " studies in human nature " here, 
when we are bowed before God in contrition, 
that are furnished nowhere else. The plainest 
man on his knees sees further into human nat- 
ure than the philosopher when standing on 
proudest tiptoe. And the human nature into 
which he sees is his own soul. The mysterious 
bondage of a soul in evil, the mysterious meth- 
ods of God's grace in freeing it from this bond- 
age, the experiences of a soul in the pangs of a 
spiritual birth as it comes into the kingdom of 
God, — these are the deeper facts of self-knowl- 
edge that none can know except as '' taught of 
God." And so the motto " know thyself " on 
Christian lips is the language not of boasting, 
but of humility. It is the deeper word of that 
deeper development which, in knowing one's 
God, gets a deeper knowledge of one's self. For 
it is not by comparing our powers with those 
of other men, nor by measuring man's httleness 
as against the majesty of God's works, or even 
as against the majesty of God himself, that we 



104 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

get at true humility. Those forms of compari- 
son ma}^ mortify without giving us a true abase- 
ment. But when we see how holy God is, how 
pure, how just ; when not only the majesty of 
his attributes awes us, but the splendor of his 
perfections rises on our vision ; and when we see 
what we should be before him, — then we bow 
low in penitence, and at the same time rise high 
in our aspiration after him. So the penitent's 
prayer, though it springs from the very dust, yet 
mounts up, as it goes on, into heaven itself. In 
sinking lowest, it rises highest. God, in convert- 
ing a man, causes the man to take deep sound- 
ings in the inner sea of self-knowledge. We 
get more of enlargement. There is more capa- 
city for loving as one's soul is exercised under 
the love of God. So that the largest self-love 
should lead one to seek out and bathe himself 
in the divine love. 

It is a happy circumstance that, in making 
provision for the soul's growth, we have in our 
hands the Word of God. Its doctrines tend 
mightily to develop the soul. Here a man may 



PRINCIPLES, 105 

take exercise as in a spiritual gj^mnasium. It 
will give a man moral muscle to use himself 
amid these things of God. How the whole 
world opens itself anew to the man who be- 
comes spiritually minded ! How broad a theatre 
is the universe for the displays of God's wis- 
dom, love, power, and grace ! Let others study 
only the questions of chemistry, the problems 
of animal and vegetable life. Let them go down 
to the core of the earth, or pierce the sky with 
telescopic tube. Such studies enlarge the in- 
tellect ; they have even a reflected glory of God 
in them. An eye, couched of its natural film, 
may see God's thought in these things. The 
theatre was plainly built for the drama; it is 
well to note that. But how much better it is 
to see the drama itself; to look not upon the 
mere boarding and nails of the universe ; to 
mark not only how well the stage is built, but 
to see the actors, and mark the developing plot ! 
Who are the actors ? Grod and %ouIb, He is re- 
vealing his plan in history, in providence, in re- 
demption, and men are coming out and going on 
5* 



106 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

and over the stage ; but meeting and solving 
also for better or for worse, the very gravest 
questions that involve an eternity. And in 
these great themes one comes to be at home. 
Amid these thoughts of God one finds a singu- 
lar charm for the mind and the heart. This is 
the atmosphere in which the soul expands. And 
this '' kingdom of God," into the purposes of 
which we are admitted through the Scriptures, 
is the kingdom that takes in all other kingdoms: 
that is the reason why the vegetable and animal 
kingdoms exist. The knowledge that covers all 
other forms is the knowledge of God and his 
purposes. The spiritual kingdom, composed of 
all souls that have the spiritual life^ is the king- 
dom in the interests of which God rules and 
overrules all things. Into that kingdom the 
regenerate enter by virtue of their spiritual 
birth. But there are provisions for their growth 
from birth to full manhood. Just as far and as 
fast as they are able to do it, God, the Sov- 
ereign of this kingdom, calls his sons to share 
with him in its cares, and administer its high 



PRINCIPLES. 107 

concerns. " I appoint unto you a kingdom ; 
ye shall sit on thrones." This is surely the 
very highest development. To do this is to 
do the grandest thing for one's self. 



PRINCIPLES. 



1. The Principle of Doing Good to Others. 

2. The Consecration of the Natural Impulse. 

3. The Christian View of Man's Worth. 

4. The Scripture Method of Teaching Immor- 

tality. 

5. The Appliances of our Age. 



THE DUTY WE OWE TO OTHERS. 

/^"N a wreck, the rescuing party could find 
at first only a single survivor. As they 
were lifting the benumbed and starving sailor 
over the side and into the boat, they saw his 
lips move. They bent their ears down close to 
him. He hoarsely whispered a single sentence, 
and could say no more, ''There s another man!'' 
They searched again. They found the man, and 
he also was rescued. Why those words about 
"the other man"? That sailor so nearly left 
to die was no relative of the one first discov- 
ered. The two men had had no special interest 
in each other. The man who had told of '' the 
other man" was not moved thereto by any 
Christian principle. He was coarse, brutal, pro- 
fane. He hated every thing like religion ; he 
never mentioned Christ's name save in an oath. 



112 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

Why that plea for the other man? It was a 
natural, though an unconsecrated impulse. It 
was the great instinct of human brotherhood 
asserting itself. It was the natural love of one's 
own kind. It was an intuition almost anterior 
to reason, and independent of it. So, with no 
time for reasoning about his act as wise or un- 
wise, no time for any thought about possible 
consequences to himself, a man has sometimes 
leaped from a wharf to seize a drowning child, 
or into the midst of a crowded street to rescue 
some little waif from under the wheels that in 
another second would have crushed out its 
young life. We praise the bravery of the act, 
and none the less do we recognize the instinct 
of humanity that prompts it. For there is a 
deep-down relationship of man to man, of each 
one to the whole race. ''The other man" is a 
brother-man. 

This instinct of our human nature, religion 
takes up with her sanctifying touch. God's 
command recognizes the human in man. It does 
not call the natural impulse holy ; for it is not. 



PRINCIPLES. 113 

of itself, holy. There is no holiness in a bird's 
love for her nest of young birds ; no holiness in 
the love of the lioness for her cubs. The bird 
and beast have no moral nature that can take 
up this natnral instinct and sanctify it. But 
what bird and beast cannot do, we as men can 
accomplish. We can make this care for our 
own kind a holy thing. It is ours to lift this 
instinct into a virtue ; to make this impulse a 
principle ; to love " the other man," not only as 
a brother-man with a body, but as one who has 
a mind and a soul, and is a being made in God's 
image and redeemed with Christ's blood, and 
who is a candidate for glory and joy eternal. 

This kind of love for men — so broad, so deep, 
so high, so peculiar— is God's gift at la Chris- 
tian's conversion. It is the '' fruit of the 
Spirit;" it is not natural to any human heart. 
No man shall ever be able to reason himself 
into this peculiar feeling — this Christian affec- 
tion — for the race. True, by careful thought on 
man's relation to man, this love may be broad- 
ened and deepened. But love does not start at 



114 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

the call of reason. It is its own reason, as it is 
its own impulse. You cannot make it to order ; 
you cannot wave a magician's wand over the 
abyss of human feeling and bid the soul to love ; 
or, if you issue the command, the feeling will 
not come. God is holy, and, through the 
grace of the gospel, man may be. Like the 
holy love of a renewed heart to the holy God, 
this holy love towards men is a divine gift. 
The two forms of love are inseparable ; they are 
at root one, — the love for holiness. They have 
the same source ; they run on side by side, the 
one- being always the measure of the other. 
And so heaven is not only loving God and being 
with him, but it is also being with the saints 
made perfect. Hence John, the Apostle of love, 
puts the love of God and the love of man to- 
gether. Loving man whom we have seen is 
proof of loving God whom we have not seen. 
If one say that he loveth God and hate his 
brother, he is a liar. And so, in the Decalogue 
the two stand side by side as well as in the 
Epistle ; and we read, " thou shalt love the 



PRINCIPLES. 115 

Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neigh- 
bor as thyself" in the one ; and in the other we 
read that '' he who loveth God (should) love 
his brother also, for love is of God." Religion 
in experience is more than a private thing be- 
tween God and a man's own soul. A Christian 
is a man who has not only a closet in which to 
pray, but a broadly-peopled world in which to 
exercise a loving soul. Just by virtue of being 
a Christian he must give room to this love of 
God and this love of his fellow-men. And in 
determining his duty, in asking whether this or 
that thing can be rightfully done, he needs not 
always ask about texts of Scripture, but he can 
use this simple principle of love for others, 
" Will this thing harm them ? Will that course 
of life lead them to think less of religion? Will 
the influence of this or that act be beneficial to 
those who must see or know it ? Will it help 
or harm them as men with souls over whom I 
am bound to exert a Christian influence?" And 
when to the first of these principles, that of 
''pleasing Christ," and to the second of these 



116 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

principles, that of a '' true self-regard," we add 
this tlfiird principle of '' doing good through the 
impulses of Christian love to our fellow-men," 
there is found a series of tests that we may 
easily and constantly apply to our life, and 
even in uncommanded things we shall seldom 
be at a loss as to how one can be a '' Christian 
in the World." 

It might seem, at first, as if the merely natural 
impulse that led the sailor to whisper to his de- 
liverers ''there is another man," was an impulse 
of as high a grade as that of the disciple of 
Christ. Certainly it acts, as in the case just 
named, with sudden power. We do not under- 
value it. We praise it. But mark (1), that it 
is not of the same Mnd as the Christian impulse: 
that (2) it does not stop to weigh things. A 
rope thrown the drowning boy would have saved 
him as certainly as did the needless imperiling 
of life : and (3) the Christian impulse often has 
all the suddenness of the natural impulse, which 
men always so much admire ; and then it has, 
in addition, that steadiness of aim, and that 



PRINCIPLES. 117 

patience of endeavor which nothing but the 
religious motives can impart. A few years 
since, when three million freedmen were thrown 
on our hands to educate and prepare for citizen- 
ship, all men at the North who had one spark 
of natural philanthropy were interested in the 
work. How the contributions flowed in ! It 
was a beautiful sight. But how soon the ardor 
abated. The spasm was over. And to-day the 
thing has come back to the churches. The 
merely natural impulse has mainly ceased. But 
religious men have taken up and are carrying 
on the work. By the education which they are 
giving to colored preachers in the various col- 
leges and institutes, they are steadily lifting up 
the colored people of the South. Those who 
w^ere to do it by schools apart from religion, and 
who depended on the natural benevolence of 
the North, are disheartened. But never was 
Christian philanthropy doing more than to-day 
for these freedmen. The same thing is seen 
in the missionary cause. The steady contribu- 
tions, year after year, of converted men who 



118 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

aim to lift the nations by seeking their religious 
welfare, are a proof of the permanent force that 
is found only in the religions impulse. 

Gocl has an order in this thing. We might 
think that it would be better to have men first 
ripened and broadened in knowledge, and then, 
when the wood has been piled on the altar, 
to have the heavenly fire descend on all this 
prepared material, and the last and best gift 
of a Christian impulse given to a thoroughly 
furnished man. But no. God's order is first 
the converted heart ; first, the love for man 
given in conversion, and then, the knowledge 
of what are men's needs and the great world's 
great wants. He takes a frivolous young man 
or woman whose only care had been for dress. 
By the power of the Holy Spirit that frivolous 
soul is sobered, is converted, has shed abroad 
in it the "love of God." Instantly tliere is a 
new affection for men ; a new sense of relation- 
ship to others ; a spiritual sense of the need 
of savinsr '' the other man." God's order in 
preparing a man for doing good is to put this 



PRINCIPLES. 119 

peculiar and sacred sense of love for men into 
the soul. The man's heart begins to enlarge. 
Every man is his neighbor, to be loved as he 
loves himself. The heart goes out to others. 
The race-bond is felt. One is thus born into 
the feeling of human brotherhood. Said a man, 
telling of his conversion, '' I had been reared to 
have an interest in every benevolent enterprise. 
I had given something more or less to them. 
But when I felt this religious change towards 
God, suddenly my heart grew large and warm 
towards every living man. I seemed to throw 
my arms about every one in any need, and 
longed to benefit him. It was a feeling of 
which until that hour I had no idea. I began 
to ask how I could benefit my fellow-men. My 
heart yearned to do them good. The change 
of my feelings towards God was hardly more 
marked than was this chancre of feeling^ towards 
men." There is no magpie about it. The new 
heart, under the guidance of the converting 
Spirit, sees "all things new," and hence its 
feelings towards men are new. It would do 



120 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

them good.^ It would help them. Nor is this 
done so much from duty as from impulse* 
Rules have their place. But their use is not 
so much in as after conversion. Beginning 
with rules, one's religion is precise, hard, dry, 
mathematical. It lacks spontaneity. It is cor- 
rect, but lifeless. It is in one's conscience more 
than in one's heart. It is bondage rather than 
freedom. But when love has entered, when 
the touch of life is given, when Christ is re- 
vealed to the soul as '^the propitiation for our 
sins, and not for ours only, but also for the 
sins of the whole world," then rules come to be 
of use ; then we can look upon the law of duty, 
and see that we are also commanded to " love 
our neighbor as ourselves." God's order is to 
give the hearty love of the thing commanded, 
and to set the commandment itself before 
our willing hearts, and then to show us that 
obedience is ''well pleasing unto the Lord." 
And when this principle of loving men and 
helping them is established in the heart, there 
is a sort of sagacity in seeing the thing to be 



PRINCIPLES. 121 

done. In this it is exactly as it is in a family 
where there are certain rules of social life that 
no one is to violate. But sympathetic souls in 
the family hardly ever think of the rules. They 
understand what will please each other, how to 
help each other. The love that really cares for 
others' good has a sort of ingenuity in striking 
out courses of action that will please and help. 
Its sympathies are its reasons for what it does. 
And the arrow thus driven seldom misses the 
mark. 

In doing men good there is to be also a sense 
of the worth of a man. It is true that those 
whose hold on religion is slight, and even those 
who have let go of it altogether, have much 
to say about the dignity of the human race. It 
would sometimes seem that what they say in 
this line is a sort of compensation to their own 
reason and judgment for the tendency which 
they feel inheres in their theories, — the ten- 
dency to belittle man. Is it that in their 
words of honor they are unconsciously truer to 
the manhood in their souls than they are when 



122 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

they propound their speculations about man 
as developed from the ape ! This, at least, is 
certain, that the drift of not a little that takes 
on the airs and uses the phrases of science does 
not tend to make us feel the worth of a man. 
Hugh Miller's words deserve to be pondered 
to-day even more than when he wrote them. 
He saye, " And thus though the development 
theory be not atheistic, it is at least practically 
tantamount to atheism. For if man be a dying 
creature, restricted in his existence to the pres- 
ent scene of things, what does it really matter 
to him, for any one moral purpose, whether 
there be a God or no ? If in reality on the same 
religious level with the wolf, dog, and fox, that 
are by nature atheists, — a nature most properly 
coupled with irresponsibility, — to what one prac- 
tical purpose should he know or believe in a 
God whom he, as certainly as they, is never to 
meet as his Judge ; or why should he square his 
conduct by the requirements of the moral code 
further than a low and convenient expediency 
may chance to demand? " And not more surely 



PRINCIPLES, 123 

does this theory '' crowd God away till his great 
orb loses all sensible diameter," than it dwarfs 
man by crowding away his moral nature until 
he is nearer to the beast below than to the God 
and Father above him. Theories of God and 
of man go together in the sceptical view. And 
they go downward together. Theories of God 
and of man go together in the Christian view. 
And they go upward together. 

The great factor in estimating man's worth is 
his moral nature. His body is small beside that 
of the elephant ; his locomotive powers, feeble 
compared with those of many of the lower 
animals. Man is redeemed from his littleness 
partially by his better intellect, but mainly by 
his moral nature, — his capacity to know the 
right, to enter into the thought and plan of 
his God. This last endowment is his main 
distinction. About this island of his being flow 
those separating seas which will compel men to 
make always a distinction between a beast and 
a man. 

Have you ever thought of the peculiar way in 



124 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

which the Bible teaches of man's moral worth. 
It does not do it by any elaborate description 
of his faculties. The Bible has no scheme of 
mental philosophy to cramp its religious teach- 
ing and color its doctrinal statements. It has 
no eloquent eulogium on the greatness of man. 
But it does more and better than that. It tells 
what kind of moral work man is to do; of the 
repentance he can feel for wrong-doing, and how 
God will accept that repentance ; of the faith 
he may exercise ; of the loye he may have for 
his God ; of the tender sympathy of sonship 
with the infinite Father, and the delightful 
allegiance to the great spiritual and eternal 
kingdom of God in heaven. The work to be 
done by man shows the powers of the being 
who is to do it. The great act shows the great 
actor. The glory and dignity of man is that he 
is great enough to hold fellowship with God ; 
to think his thoughts, enter into his plans, and 
be a voluntary worker with him. It is this 
distinctively religious view that makes man of 
so much worth. 



PRINCIPLES. 125 

And exactly as the greatness of man is taught 
in a peculiar way in the Bible, so it is with liis 
immortality. Not a single text teaches a hare 
immortality ; a characterless soul with an eternal 
existence. Joy is eternal. Woe is unending. 
Holiness endures for ever. Sin is the undying 
worm. It is always the ^tate that is immortal, 
— the state of joy or doom. And man is not in 
the Bible simply in the process on unto immor- 
tality, as the apostles of natural religion teach 
us, but he is a candidate for the eternal ^oy or 
ivoe. Tliese are the eternal things. These are 
the immortal states. And of course they carry 
with them the immortahty of the man who is to 
enter one or the other of these immortal states. 
Says another, '' It was not the mission of Christ 
or his Apostles to expatiate on any abstract or 
naked doctrine of immortality, — an immortality 
considered apart from its moral relations. They 
have nothing to say about an abstract immor- 
tality which no one will ever experience, — a 
meaningless immortality. They proclaim end- 
less holiness and well-being or everlasting sin 



126 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

and woe as depending on faith and repentance 
exercised here. They never tell men so little 
as the bare, bald fact that they shall exist here- 
after. They tell them a great deal more. They 
tell them abundantly how they shall exist." ^ 

And is not this way of teaching man's immor- 
tality — the teaching of the immortality of the 
state in which he is to exist — a way far superior 
to that of the best philosophers and poets ? The 
world's ablest reasoners are right as far as they 
go in teaching an immortality for the soul. But 
the Scripture conception of the state as the 
immortal thing is peculiarly impressive. Had 
mere philosophers, from Plato to Hamilton, writ- 
ten our Bible, they would have used the phi-ase, 
''an immortal soul." But how thin and poor 
that phrase compared with the Scripture phrases 
which tell us of the kind of immortality that is 
for everj^ man ! The philosopher's phrase is right 
enough. It exactly expresses their doctrine as 
opposed to the infidel doctrine of a mortal soul. 
It is the exact affirmation of the truth so far 

1 Prof. Bartlett, in *' Life and Deatli Eternal." 



PRINCIPLES, 127 

as it stands up against the sceptic's denial. 
But, after all, it is a mere logical phrase, — 
blank, bald, characterless, while the Scripture 
form is bold, full, specific ; dealing as it does 
with the state of this immortality, — its qual- 
ity, its condition, as good or bad, joyous or ter- 
rible. 

So, too, the poets of the race sing of the 
immortal soul of man. They have in mind the 
outer fact, the mere shell of the great fruitage, 
— immortality as an abstract thing. Even this 
has in it grandeur, and shows the worth of man. 
It is not pride that makes men hold to the 
idea of an endless being. As sinners, men have 
reasons for denying the instinct, if that were 
successfully possible. Fear, and dread, and the 
universal feeling that to be immortal is to be 
under the necessity of meeting God as one's 
Judge, — these things all make men wish to 
deny the fact of future life. But the shrinking 
from annihilation is an instinct, — an instinct 
strengthened by reason. The great master of 
English song has it, — 



128 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

''If the breath 
Be life itself, and not its task and tent, 
If even a soul like Milton's can know death ; 
O man ! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant, 
Blank accident, nature's anomaly! 
Go weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears, 
The counterweights ! Thy laughter and thy tears 
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create 
And to repay each other! Why rejoices 
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good? 
Why cowl thy face beneath a mourner's hood? 
Image of image, ghost of ghostly elf, 
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold? 
Be sad! Be glad! Be neither! Seek or shun! 
Thou hast no reason why ! Thou canst have none ! 
Thy being's being is a contradiction! " 

Or, in calmer moods, with less feeling of indig- 
nation, and more readiness to hear the careful 
statement of the reasons for the coming life, we 
listen to another priest of song,^ — 

" It must be so. Plato, thou reasonest well! 
Else why this pleasing hope, this fond desire. 
This longing after immortality ? 
'Tis the divinity that stirs within us. 
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself 
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years. 
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth, 
Unhurt amid the war of elements. 
The wreck of matter, and the crash of worlds!'' 

1 Addison, in '' Cato." 



PRINCIPLES. 129 

Poetry and philosophy teach of man's worth 
because of the eternal endurance of his faculties. 
There is grandeur in the thought of an existence 
that runs on parallel with that of God. They 
utter their protest both on the ground of reason 
and of morality against the idea that when the 
righteous die or the wicked die, that is the last 
of either or of both. If the wicked have noth- 
ing to fear, they will sin with stouter heart and 
not repent at all. If the good have nothing to 
hope for beyond, the trials that are incident 
to goodness, and which would never come but 
for goodness, will not be borne, but men will 
be tempted to shirk the goodness in order to 
escape the self-denials of the narrow way. So 
says philosophy. So says common-sense. How 
inexpressible the vanity of man if not immortal ! 
But while reason and common-sense can say 
all this, they say little or nothing that really 
moves our hearts. They stir our wonder. 
*' How great, how grand, how awful a thing 
it is to be an immortal ! " they say. We are 

amazed at ourselves. But all this does not 
6* I 



130 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

stir the soul as does the Scripture mode of 
teaching. God's Word describes the state of 
joy or of woe that is unending. We look in 
upon the glory of the heavenly city. We see 
the harpers and hear the hymn. The words 
of the song come across the separating spaces, 
and we cjatch the strains of the chorus as they 
ascribe " Honor and power and blessing and 
glory to him that sitteth on the throne." And 
this intense and holy life is the eternal life. 
And over against this state is the other: and 
every figure of woe is used ; and this death to 
all goodness is '' the second death." And the 
two states are represented as enduring for ever. 
And for the one or for the other, every man 
is living. Who, then, can tell the worth of a 
man when we look out at him through the lens 
of God's Word ! We are more than awed by 
the spectacle. We are touched in our tenderest 
feelings. It is a living man who shall go into 
one of these states of joy or grief. What words 
can set forth the value of a human being ! 
Never once do the sacred writers attempt it. 



PRINCIPLES, 131 

Tliey use the tenderest appeals; they set forth 
the atoning blood, the infinite blessing of a 
Holy Spirit's work on the soul; they invite, 
warn, persuade, — but there they leave it. 
They only say, '' What shall a man give in 
exchange for his soul?" 

And this is not the exceptional endowment 
of here and there a choice and peculiar man. 
Each man is a candidate for the blessed life in 
heaven. He was made for that. He has powers 
for that. Christ has died in order to that. The 
terrible fact of sin has come in. It threatens 
to destroy all our power for happiness in God, 
and so to render the soul a castaway. But as 
an outcast even, there is a terrible grandeur to 
a man. In ruins, this temple is grander than 
other temples in their completeness. And so, 
wherever you find him, high or low, young or 
old, black or white, bond or free, the human 
being is a being of inexpressible worth. And 
the Avorth of him is not any mere bodily worth, 
nor yet that of mere mental faculty. His worth 
is that, as a moral being, he is in a moral state 
that endures for ever. 



132 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

See yonder majestic steamship. She was built 
to breast the strongest wave of the stormy- 
Atlantic . Four thousand years of naval ar- 
chitecture culminate in her form. The skill of 
the long generations of mankind, as they have 
gained it by battling with the facts and forces 
of nature, are seen in her appointments. Even 
the most harmful things of the natural world are 
made helpful to her safety and speed. She is 
iron in her hull, iron in her spars, iron in her 
very cordage. But the iron swims in the new 
miracle as in the old. Every appliance of art is 
seen in her machinery. Every luxury of modern 
life is found in her cabins. She cuts her way in 
the pathless sea, and leaps, a thing of life, from 
wave to wave. She seems almost to be conscious 
of an inward power, and you can hear the throb 
of the great iron heart that beats within. She 
is one of the most wonderful things that man 
ever made. And yet that little emigrant child 
that crouches yonder by the hatchway and looks 
down with great astonished eyes on the monster 
engine below, — that little child is a vastly 



PRINCIPLES, 133 

greater wonder than any thing about the ship. 
There was the unfathomable mystery of its 
birth, the greater mystery of the union of its 
l)ody with its soul, the mystery of its moral 
nature that is to detect the right and the wrong, 
and is to act eternally. And this is the endow- 
ment of every human being. 

On one occasion they came to Jesus asking 
his aid. Thej^ said "he was worthy" for whom 
they asked that thing. Man is worthy of all 
our acts of kindness. He is worth being rescued 
from the sad slavery of vicious habit ; from the 
sensualism that drags him down ; from the sor- 
row that wastes him here and threatens him 
hereafter. 

*^ The soul of man is larger than the sky, 
Deeper than ocean or the abysmal dark 
Of the unfathomed centre. Like that ark, 
Which in its sacred hold uplifted high, 
O'er the drowned hills, the human family. 
And stock reserved of every living kind, 
So in the compass of the single mind 
The seeds and pregnant forms in essence lie 
That make all worlds." ^ 

1 H. Coleridge. 



134 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

Never was there such practical belief in the 
Christian worth of man as to-day. The doctrine 
of immortality is not kept for creeds. It does 
not lie on the shelf, a truth believed, but uninflu- 
ential. Men take it up. The churches of Christ 
have made it a vital thing. The idea of saintship 
is no more that of some venerable monk repeat- 
ing a hundred Pater-nosters per day. Saintship 
has its types in Henry Martyn and Adoniram 
Judson, as they labor for the minds and souls of 
degraded men. Man's worth grows larger the 
more Christ's sacrifice for man is appreciated. 
For it is now felt that we are never so much 
like him as when we prize men enough to strive 
to save them from sin and death. Christians 
are loving the truth, as indeed they should do. 
But they are coming also to see that if they 
simply embalm the truth in '' confessions of 
faith," they are not using it as God intended. 
It is committed to our trust that with it we 
may do men good. To defend the truth that 
our brother man is not a brother beast but a 
brother immortal, is well. We owe it to him, 



PRINCIPLES, 135 

to ourselves, to our God, that our theory of man 
be right. But to practice upon the truth of our 
brother's immortality by beginning already to 
prize him, to help iiim, to guide him, to save 
him, — this is to believe reallj^ in him as the 
inheritor of an eternity, as a being having 
capacity for everlasting joy in the love and 
service of God. 

It might seem at first as if this view of man's 
worth, as it is chiefly the religious view, is to 
be used only in the line of our religious duties. 
But even when their religious welfare is the 
ultimate aim, the best way of approaching men 
is through their social and their business life. 
They are friends, neighbors, citizens. We are 
to know them in these relations ; and here, 
whensoever we will, we may do them good. 
They and we are in the body. And through 
the body we reach the soul. The man who 
finds us kindly in the ministrations of sickness 
is the more ready to hear our words about the 
cure of sm and the better way of living. It 
must have been for this reason that the Master 



136 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

SO often wrought miracles of healing. He could 
have summoned the people by his eloquence. 
Sermons like the '^ Sermon on the Mount" he 
could have spoken every day. That would 
have astonished and amazed men. They would 
have given him the meed of their praise. But 
he would not have gained hearts. He would 
not then have left such an example on record to 
cheer the lowly soul that, in common life and by 
the ministries of patience and love, is trying to 
be like him in doing men good. He recognized 
the relations of social life. He was a man with 
men. He felt the throb of human hearts. At 
Cana's marriage, at Nain's funeral, on the 
cross in his words about his mother, he showed 
that his religion did not, in a fierce zeal for 
the future, forget the duties of this life. The 
ascetic of the second and third centuries would 
have trampled on all these relations. What ! 
a man present at a marriage feast when he 
should be at the great work of saving souls 
from death ! A man dying, and just about to 
enter eternity, and caring about such a paltry 



PRINCIPLES. 137 

thing as how his mother should get her daily 
bread! As if the saving of the soul were 
inconsistent with the innocent festivity of a 
marriage, or with the care for the bodily wants 
of the living ! Better and truer and more 
Christlike is the view that sanctifies social and 
business life, — that does not say this thing is 
secular, and to be done as a matter of worldly 
policy, and that thing is religious, and to be 
done on Christian principles. Better to say that 
all life, social and religious, is Christian. And 
in it all and through it all men are to be reached 
and good is to be done unto them. When Napo- 
leon saw his artillery firing with little or no 
success at the Russians who were crossing the 
river upon the ice, he bade them fire into the 
air, so that the shot, dropping in front and 
breaking the ice, should hinder their advance. 
The experiment was a success. So, often in the 
work of doing men good, we may gain indirectly 
what we could never gain by the direct assault. 
The miracle of healing at the hands of Christ 
opened the heart to the word of his grace. 



138 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

The kind act of the Christian has dissolved the 
prejudice and gained a hearing for the religion 
that was thus commended. The gunners of 
Napoleon were doing not less, but more, when 
they aimed into the air. Their object was the 
same. They were serving the cause. 

And yet it will not do to keep in mind only the 
indirect method. What would have been the 
result if our Lord had stopped with healing 
the sick and giving sight to the blind ! We are 
to use the indirect methods ; to use them wisely. 
But they are not enough alone. And we shall 
better use the indirect methods, if we are well 
practised in the positive and Christian work of 
laboring to make men the disciples of Christ. 
Each heart must touch a heart ; each convert, 
gain a convert. To apply gospel truth to souls 
in need of it ; to use social opportunities ; to 
employ the intervals of business and of care 
in speaking to men of the claims of religion, 
— these are forms of direct labor that no one 
may neglect who lives to do good to his fellow- 
men. 



PRINCIPLES. 139 

A living sympathy with those we would help 
is a prime requisite. We are not, as from the 
superior position of culture or of religion, to 
harangue men. They resent our assumed supe- 
riority. The poorest man does not want to be 
patronized. He has his work to sell ; the labor 
of his hands of which he wishes to dispose. He 
is a man, not a '' hand." Or, if sick, and in 
need of temporary help, he is to be met as a 
man. For he feels that it is no disgrace to be 
sick, and therefore in need of another's kindness. 
He is saying to himself that but for this trouble 
he should be able to provide for himself. His 
self-respect, his manhood, must not be insulted 
by any Lord or Lady Bountiful. And, above 
all, when seeking to help men spiritually, to 
bring them into God's kingdom, there must be 
no offensive superiority. A man must put him- 
self on the level of a sinner speaking to sinners. 
He is to commend God's grace. That grace 
saved him. And he is there to tell of that grace 
which Ls able also to save others. He is not 
there to speak of himself, but of Christ ; not to 



140 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

tell of one's achievements, but of what help God 
furnishes in his gospel to needy souls. Nothing 
repels more than self-consequence, unless it be 
self-righteousness. 

And there is also the matter of merciful judg- 
ment. We owe it to other men to be tender 
towards their faults. We may not, indeed, say 
that black is white ; we may not confuse moral 
distinctions ; we may not by excess of kindness 
take out of sin all its blame. But it is possible 
to hold the sinner blameworthy, and yet never 
use that severity of tone which might well be- 
come perfect men, but does not become us as 
those who are very far from perfection. We are 
not to lower the tone. Truth and righteousness 
are just as great and good and pure if there is 
not found anywhere a man to practice them. 
We are to keep high the standard. But faith- 
fulness can be kindly ; nay, it must be kindly 
to be faithful. A sick man, when asked to see 
a minister of religion, at onCe declined : '' No," 
he said, " I don't want to be lectured." Absent 
for years from the sanctuary, and having little 



PRINCIPLES. 141 

connection with religious men, he had obtained 
all his ideas of Christianitj^ and of Christians 
from their enemies. He had come to think 
Christians, and especially the ministers of relig- 
ion, a class who indulged the feeling that they 
were vastly better than others, and so would 
look down in scorn on common sinners. But 
at length he was persuaded to see the nearest 
minister. The clergyman, after kind and sympa- 
thetic inquiry about the man's sickness, passed 
on, naturally and easily, to speak of us all as 
diseased with sin, and all in need of God's 
mercy for forgiveness and renewing. The man 
listened with keenest interest ; and when the 
pastor had gone, the sufferer, turning to a 
friend, said, ''I thought he would lecture me ; 
but he put himself on my level as a sinner, say- 
ing that we all were sinners. I want that man 
to call again." Mercy is never inconsistent with 
justice. Judgment of men is to be tender that 
it may be true ; and it is more likely to be both 
when we count ourselves in with those we con- 
demn; our infirmities, in some other direction 



1^2 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

equalling, it may be, those of our erring neigh- 
bor and brother. " Be ye t-ender-hearted, for- 
giving one another, even as God for Christ's 
sake hath forgiven you." There is a broad and 
beautiful knowledge of men as men ; of the 
principles on which they act; of the motives 
that mix themselves so strangely in human 
souls. This shrewdness in sorting out the inner 
impulses of men is to be prized; it is not to 
be confounded with that low cunning by which 
some men are swift to detect the evil and slow 
to see the good in their fellow-men. There are 
narrow souls that have an affinity only for evil ; 
they often claim an especial keenness in judging 
human nature. It is the principle of ''rogue 
catching rogue because he knows the ways of a 
rogue." But the broad Christian knowledge of 
human nature, that which a "Christian in the 
world " ought to covet, is a knowledge not only 
of evil but of good. No good man can make a 
carrion crow of himself. If he is compelled to 
know some evil things of evil men, his tastes 
and his sympathies lead him to where he finds 



PRINCIPLES, 143 

good things in good men, — sweet, blessed traits 
of character, heaven-born and heaven-bred qual- 
ities in souls that are heaven-bound. 

Nor are we to know men only as single men, 
but men in the mass, — the men of our own 
age and the tendencies of our times. There are 
questions that belong to each generation ; they 
are thrust on it by God himself ; they must be 
met ; they are not to be hindered. Men cry, 
" don't agitate them ; " and by this cry they are 
agitated all the more. Men say, '' don't press 
this or that reform, lest it should disturb church 
or state." But it is of no use ; the thing is in 
the air ; the very stones will cry out if men will 
keep still ; it gets itself taken up. If the right 
men will not take it up, then the wrong men will 
do it ; if right-spirited men will not advocate it, 
men of harsh and irritating speech — the nat- 
ural iconoclasts born into every generation — 
will seize on it and lash every Christian laggard 
more severely than those guilty of the abuse 
they profess to oppose. Nor will it do, because 
in a republican government such questions have 



144 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

a political bearing as well as a moral, to remand 
them to the politicians. The right and the 
wrong in them is a matter to be decided by him 
who would be a " Christian in the world." He 
must not be caught napping; he must not let 
the " times go over him," and awake, after the 
question is decided, to find that he has been on 
the wrong side, if on either. These questions 
have in them not barely an abstract right, but 
they touch men. These questions are often the 
culmination of the sorrows, the prayers, the 
tears, and sometimes the blood of holy, though 
hidden, souls. One must not ride a hobby; 
but the way to avoid the hobby is to have one 
aim in life, — an aim so large that we can say 
with Paul, '' This one thing I do." It will do 
to be ''a man of one idea " whenever that 
idea is a solar idea. There must be enough 
in it, as there is enough light in the sun, to 
shine on all things. '' I am a man, and am 
concerned in all that relates to mankind," said 
the Roman orator ; and the theatre rung with 
the thunders of applause. And just here is 



PRINCIPLES. 146 

the test of any question that we have to meet. 
We are to ask always of its bearing on men, 
— on men as those who are ennobled and 
enriched in opportunity by the Gospel, and 
who must in no way be hindered from receiv- 
ing and obeying the commands of Christ. 
The principles of religion do not change ; but 
their application varies with the questions which, 
under different circumstances of human society, 
are ever rising to the surface. The supreme 
desire to benefit men through the Gospel of 
Jesus, and the constant practice of looking at 
each thing as a help or hindrance to this great 
end, will be a guide to the earnest Chris- 
tian. 

And in this love for the race how is a man 
inspired b}'- the great examples of the past? 
" There is nothing that will let the light into 
the soul like personal influence ; nothing that 
can lift one up out of the darkness, and lead one 
into the divine and quickening light, and bap- 
tize one in the spirit of faith, hope, love, and 
charity, like the magic power of a great exam- 



146 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

pie ; nothing that can inspire, exalt, and purify, 
like the magnetic rays of healing and helping 
that beam out of the eyes of noble men and 
women. If your life has been deep and broad 
in its experience, then you have seen lives that 
were better than yours ; lives whose pure light 
shone upon you from a serener height than you 
could reach, and touched you and warmed you 
through and through ; just as the drooping 
flowers, some chilly morning, have looked up 
through the thick fogs and caught a glimpse of 
the bright sun, which scatters the mists and 
opens the glad blossoms to the warm, life-giving 
light. Whose life is not, sometimes, wrapped 
around with fogs? Who has not looked up 
from his little life-world and seen no cheering 
sun above him, — nothing but a heavy, leaden 
sky hanging over? And then, perhaps, you 
have almost doubted the sun itself, doubted 
goodness and doubted God, — until you have 
seen the clouds break away, the fogs lift, and 
doubt vanish before the beautiful radiance of 
some shining example. I tell you that I be- 



PRINCIPLES. 147 

lieve, more and more, that what the world 
needs to reform and redeem it is holier, purer, 
diviner lives, — lives that shall be the light of 
men." 

All the great examples of love for the race 
are seen coming to do obeisance to the one great 
Example. Lived they before or after, they 
lived with reference to him. He was the great 
ideal man of the ages before he came. He was 
the '' Man," the ideal of all manhood, of whom 
David sang in the Psalm, where he makes man 
'' to have dominion over all the works of God's 
hands, and all things are put under his feet." 
Abraham saw his day. Joseph was his type, as, 
indeed, in some single respect, were all the holy 
men of the former dispensation. All the proph- 
ets gave testimony to him ; and in all the civil- 
ized earth, since the day of Christ's appearing, 
every splendid instance of self-forgetful affec- 
tion, every noble and generous deed in which 
any human heart has given loving proof of its 
devotion to others' good, has had a higher lustre 
in the eyes of the race by their recognition of 



148 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

that deed as Christ-like, In this matter there 
have been many teachers, but only one Master. 
He was the exemplification of his own com- 
mand, " Thon shalt love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRAYER. 



1. Through the Closet into the World. 

2. Prayer the Dictate of Gratitude. 

3. Prayer a Command. 

4. Prayer brings the Peculiar Grace of God- 

liness. 

5. Prayer a Power to be used for our Fellow- 

men. 



VI. 

THE CHRISTIAN IIST PRAYER. 

TT is said that there is a market-place in one 
of the old-world cities which can be ap- 
proached only through the vestibule of a tem- 
ple. If the fact be so, is there not in it this 
teaching, that business is to come after deyo- 
tion? In the " Sermon on the Mount," our Lord 
puts prayer in very much the same place. The 
order of his topics in that sermon is as much 
for our teaching as are its precepts. He lays 
down first of all the principles of religion in the 
beatitudes. He advances next to the dutj^ of 
each disciple to reflect upon the world the pe- 
culiar light of these principles. He then shows 
how his doctrine stands related to the old law. 
And thus he comes to the three duties of pri- 
vate or personal religion, — alms-giving, the 
amount to be determined in the closet ; prayer, 



152 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

to be offered in private ; and fasting, to be done 
alone with God. And then, and only then, 
does he take the disciple out into the world. 
Through these duties of private religion the 
Christian is to go out where men are laying 
up their treasures, and there he is so to use 
worldly things as to lay up treasure in heaven. 
Christ's order is through the closet into the 
world; from ttie place of prayer to the place of 
trade ; from the temple to the market. 

Our philosophy of prayer need not be com- 
plicated. If there are difficulties about the 
hearing and answering of prayer, there are 
vastly more about prayer as not heard nor 
answered. God must hear because he is God. 
Can we ever communicate our wish to a friend, 
and God fail to hear the word we utter ? How 
much less when we speak to God himself ! 
What do men mean when they question whether 
God can hear prayer ? Do they think that they 
can utter a word so silently that he cannot hear 
it? Before we can enter any chamber of prayer 
he must be there to listen. He must hear, or 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA YER. 153 

he is not God. But will lie answer the petition 
which he hears ? And why not ? Is he not 
ahle ? But, be it remembered that he is God. 
Will he do it? Again, he is God. Given a 
God hke our God, and given also a man, a 
creature of want and dependence, made to cling 
as the climbing plants are made to cling to some 
support, made to pray, and sometimes forced by 
his necessities down upon his knees in supplica- 
tion, — for this God to make this man as he has, 
and then refuse to hear his prayer, would task 
our faith more severely than any and all of 
the miracles and promises of the Bible. On 
the score of believing that which has the least 
difficulty, the proposition '' God will hear 
prayer " is easier to our faith than that other 
alternative which is thrust upon us, " God 
will not hear prayer." Does any one hint that, 
through sin, the door of God's audience-room 
may be shut to us ? But right over against the 
fact of sin is the fact of a Saviour, who is also 
our advocate with God. And in the Sermon of 

this Saviour we read, " Enter into thy closet, 
7* 



154 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

and when thou hast shut thy door, pray unto 
thy Father." 

Prayer is a preparation. We should pray 
before going out to the work of the day. Not 
only are the fresh morning hours best for this 
exercise, but they, in a sense, govern the day. 
Every one knows what it is to have days in 
which all things go wrong. Every one knows 
how in them things seem half possessed with the 
spirit of misrule ; how nothing goes as it should, 
or is where it ought to be ; how the things about 
us seem out of joint, and disaster, confusion, 
and discord come crowding in upon us on those 
" unlucky days." If we stop and think, it will 
be found that our nerves have been rasped or 
our feelings disturbed by something at the out- 
set. Its hours were wrongly begun. We let 
something vex or irritate us in the morning, and 
the whole day went wrong. And there are 
other days when we are conquerors, when 
nothing can bring us down ; when some joyous 
fact in the opening hours has prepared us to 
live in the sunshine and avoid the cloud. It is 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA VER, 155 

the testimony of devout men tliat the morning 
prayer in the closet has prepared them for the 
day's toil. In the commercial disasters of 1837, 
a merchant, doing a vast business in New York, 
said, " I never dared on any one of those ter- 
rible days to go down town until I had got 
steadied and strengthened, and, in a measure, 
prepared for what might come, by a season of 
private prayer. Every day brought disasters. 
Nobody dared trust even his friend, hardly 
himself. I knew that some were tempted to 
save themselves and their families by putting 
aside and out of sight their property. When 
the pinch should come to me, I was afraid I 
might be left to do what was not honest and 
straightforward. It was a comfort and a prep- 
aration to put the whole matter in God's hands, 
and feel that striving to do just right he would 
not leave me. If compelled to fail, it was a 
comforting thought that I had in God and his 
love that which the world did not give and could 
not take. I could not have lived through those 
frightful weeks if I had not clung to my morn- 



156 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

ing prayer." And the farmer was not so far from 
right who, terribly profane before his conversion, 
never dared enter the neighboring city without 
his morning prayer for preservation from what 
had been his besetting sin. He had feared — 
and it had become to him a sort of nervous dread 
— that he might at some time, in an unguarded 
moment, let slip some word of profanity. Then 
neither he himself nor his fellow-men could any 
longer believe him to be a Christian. It was a 
test thing even before God, to him. Starting 
at an earlier hour than usual one morning, he 
omitted his customary petition. He remembered 
the fact just as he was entering the city. What 
should he do ? Pray, in thought, right there ? 
But would he not be likely then to forget again, 
and so lose the habit, and so forfeit the protec- 
tion of his God ? Back he turned, and traversed 
the weary miles to his praying place, and offered 
his prayer for preservation from what had been 
his besetting infirmity. Who that knows what 
it is to be tempted strongly toward any one 
sin, will venture to blame him ? If the Master 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA VER, 157 

needed to pray for Peter that liis '' faith fail 
not," shall one who is assailed by any tempta- 
tion fail to make much of the prayer he daily 
lifts to heaven for daily strength? 

And if no single sin assaults our weakness, 
there are a whole host of untoward influences 
that may overpower us. There is in every man's 
business or profession some peculiar exposure. 
His position, noy^ in one way and now in an- 
other, tends to weaken his religious life. The 
present evil world gets hold of him. It makes 
itself the real world to him. It crowds out the 
higher world with its facts of duty and the rich 
doctrines of God's grace. And thus a man may 
think that there is something so unfortunate in 
his position that there is in it an absolute hin- 
drance to his best Christian living. He finds 
himself now and then in the midst of a day- 
dream, in which, far away from his present 
position, in some other land, in some other 
work, in some other church, he is a very noble 
Christian, and doing very brave work in religion. 
But this is a mistake. God has set him not in 



158 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

an ideal but in an actual field. And there is 
nothing about his position that need hinder him 
if he would only go out to his work through the 
closet of secret prayer. Cares and trials, the 
whole mob of daily annoyances that thicken 
about us, that dog our steps, — these nameless 
perplexities of the outer life, — they would be 
less dangerous were we better prepared, through 
prayer, to meet them. 

** Lord, what a change within us one short hour 
Spent in thy presence will prevail to make, 
What heavy burdens from our bosoms take, 
What parched grounds refresh as with a shower ! 
We kneel, and all about us seems to lower ; 
We rise, and all, the distant and the near, 
Stands forth in sunny outline brave and clear. 
We kneel how weak! we rise how full of power! 
Why therefore should we do ourselves this wrong, 
Or others, that we are not always strong ; 
That we are ever overborne with care. 
Anxious and troubled, when with us is prayer. 
And joy and strength and courage are with Thee? " 

Prayer is also the dictate of gratitude. Life 
may have had its overhanging clouds, its falling 
rain, perhaps its rough tempest with the bolt of 
blasting. But does any man suffer more than 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA YER. 159 

he deserves ? Does any one suffer as did lie 
who suffered in the garden and on the cross? 
Never is our life so dark as to have no tinge of 
brightness on the edge of the cloud. One there 
was who cried out, '' My God, my God, why 
hast thou forsaken me ? " that there never need 
be another soul to utter that cry. Whatever 
has come or yet betides any man, here is at 
least a joy, that this is not an orphaned world. 
Every trial is a trial, not an accident. There 
is a hving God when our eyes are too much 
swollen with weeping to see how he can be the 
loving God. There are times when we must 
get down to that rock and stand firmly there. 
We say, and it is the first ray of Kght, that there 
is no accident, or chance, or fortune, or misfor- 
tune ; but ''the Lord reigneth." And is there 
not in that fact a comfort, nay, the beginning of 
gratitude and the return of joy ? The world is 
not orphaned ; and we are not fatherless. We 
come to thank God that there is a God; and 
that he is God. But the saddest life is not all 
sad. There are days of sunshine. The dial of 



160 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

a grateful heart marks many shining hours. If 
any man will sit down and count over his 
mercies, he will be amazed at the number. 
For the gift of natural life in such a world ; 
for a mind to know and a heart to feel ; for the 
best privileges of any land on which the sun 
ever shone ; for the restraining grace that kept 
us from viler sins; for the dying Christ, the 
present salvation, the hope of heaven, — can 
any man go over, even with rapid and general 
glance, these things, and have no stirring of 
gratitude to God for them ? And this gratitude 
must voice itself in prayer. A man who feels it, 
must go and tell his God about it alone. A man 
not grateful enough to tell his benefactor of 
his thankfulness, is not grateful at all. If a man 
is grateful, he will enter his closet sometimes on 
purpose to give vent to his grateful heart. There 
is, indeed, the prayer of penitence seeking par- 
don ; the prayer of a man perplexed as to duty, 
and seeking guidance ; the prayer of a mourner 
weeping at the feet of Christ. But the prayer 
now indicated is not agonizing, nor imploring, 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA YER, 161 

nor yet is it the submission that says, '' Thy will 

be done." It is calm, sweet, gentle prayer; the 

prayer that flows rather than strives ; that prays 

itself out easily and naturally, because grate- 

fuUy. 

*' One hour with thee, my God, when night. 
With solemn step and slow, climbs the high heaven, 
And the sweet stars, unutterably bright, 
Are shining forth upon the world below. 
Oh then afar from haunts of men I'll flee, 
And spend one sacred hour, my God, with Thee! " 

Prayer is also a command. How peculiar the 
words of our Lord, '' ^Yllen thou prayest^ enter 
into thy closet"! It is implied that one will, 
of course, pray. This is a dictate of nature. It 
is an instinct. It is, like the belief in God, a 
natural belief, that prayer is to be offered and 
will be answered. 

" Prayer is recognized by every form of relig- 
ion that has existed in the world. The most 
degraded Hottentot prays to his Fetich, though 
it be no better than a stick of wood. The 
Hindoo, of whatever rank or caste, bows in 
adoration before his ugly idol. The polished 



162 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

Greeks and Romans, with purer taste thougli 
with little better reason, offered their suppli- 
cations in the presence of those sculptured 
forms of beauty and grandeur which embodied 
their highest conceptions of human excellence 
as deified and exalted to the skies. Homer 
represents prayers as Jove's daughters, lame, 
wrinkled, and slant-eyed, — that is, feeble and 
deformed in themselves, — but mighty as mes- 
sengers between earth and heaven. Socrates 
rebukes those who did not look to God in 
prayer. A well-known infidel, in peril of ship- 
wreck, called loudly on God to have mercy on 
him ; and men who have denied the divine 
existence, have been so oppressed by a felt 
want of the divine teaching that they have 
poiued out their supphcations into the blank 
and drear vacuity by which they were sur- 
rounded." Tlie whole hterature of the world 
shows the instinct to be not only universal 
but powerful. Even in common conversation, 
how often we hear the phrase from prayerless 
men and women, '' I hope and pray " that this 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA VER. 163 

or that thing may be ! The sense of the fitness 
of prayer for things earnestly desired is univer- 
sal. And some who tell us that they have no 
habit of daily prayer, excuse themselves under 
the plea that their lives are a prayer ! When 
we see this same transcendentalism leading men 
to act where they should eat, to use muscle 
where they should be taking food, then we shall 
be the more ready to accept acting as a sub- 
stitute for praying. The excuse, useless as a 
reason for the neglect of actual prayer, is yet 
a testimony to the fact of duty felt. As if for 
ever to shut off all attempts to put any other 
duty in the place of prayer, or to put any 
other kind of prayer in the place of secret 
prayer, we are told expressly " to enter thy 
closet, and, when thou hast shut thy door, pray 
unto thy Father." 

For one's own good this is to be done. 
There is a virtue of godliness. It is not to be 
confounded with other virtues. It is as distinct 
a thing as is honesty or temperance or kind- 
ness. Godliness is simply God-likeness. It is 



164 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

also a direct and positive feeling towards him. 
' It is the recognition of God, the feeling of love 
to God, of allegiance to God, of accountability 
to God, of delight in God. Godliness nourishes 
every other virtue. But it is neither composed 
of them, nor are they any substitute for it. 

And this peculiar virtue and grace of charac- 
ter is learned nowhere else so well as in private 
prayer. God demands of us that solemn awe, 
that devout reverence, which befit us always, 
but are best exercised on our knees. Beneath 
God's eye — he on the throne, we kneeling at 
the footstool — we learn how to adore him. He 
demands our reverent praise. And prayer will 
sometimes be like a devout hymn of the heart. 
He demands that we offer petitions, — petitions 
running over all the broad ground from '' Give 
us our daily bread" to that which asks "Forgive 
us our sins." It may be that we shall tell God 
nothing new when we rehearse before him the 
story of our wants. But he who has a father's 
heart requires it, perhaps to add to liis own joy 
as he hears us, perhaps to add to our joy as we 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRAYER . 165 

come, childlike, to tell oiir Father. If it were 
'^.ertain that there were no answer, we, as men, 
should still need to pray. But we must lelieve 
even in that case that answer does come. For, 
without that belief, no man could ever pray. 
And so, needing to pray, we have the right to 
the conviction that we trust no ''lie made up 
in our nature," but a sure instinct, when we 
believe in God's answer to man's prayer. 
Prayer has, indeed, an influence on him who 
offers it : it collects his roving thoughts ; it 
humbles him ; it exalts him ; it broadens his 
view ; it does most of any thing to work in a 
man this virtue of godliness. But this is not 
all, is not even the main thing, about prayer. 
Prayer influences Grod, Let no one hesitate as 
if there were irreverence here, as if this were 
making God subject to man. It is all of God's 
will and not of man's will that he hears prayer. 
If he shall choose to be influenced by man's 
prayer, is he unable to do so ? Is he so circum- 
scribed that he cannot allow man's prayer to 
be a power, if he wills that it shall be such? 



166 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

He of his own free-will and good pleasure has 
elected that prayer shall be a potency, not 
because it is in itself powerful, — for, by the 
very condition of prayer, it is not the power it 
asks for, — but because he has provided for it, 
and inspires it, and has been pleased to ordain 
an answer to it. '' Thy Father, which seeth in 
secret, shall reward thee openly." He then who 
does not pray violates a command, annihilates 
a virtue, dwarfs his nature, and displeases his 
God. How vast a source of strength and con- 
solation God has opened in prayer! We must 
use it, or we offend him and injure ourselves. 
And prayer is a power for our fellow-men. 
We are bound to do them all the good we can, 
in all the ways we can. No man who omits 
prayer, or who uses it negligently, can claim 
that he is doing all his duty to his fellow- 
men. The blessings the world has received in 
answer to Christians' prayers, it does not yet 
understand. There are, however, some who 
are feeling grateful for a father's or a mother's 
petitions. Many a straying soul has felt that 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA YER, 167 

he was followed everywhere by them, and, 
when the prodigal has returned, he has owned 
the debt under which those prayers have laid 
him. And what a field for doing good is here ! 
We cannot, it may be, be eloquent men ; but 
we can be praying men. Silver and gold we 
may not have to give to those who can be 
blessed thereby; but "such as we have" — 
and sometimes that is better for some impotent 
man at the Temple-gate than any gift of gold or 
silver — we can give in the currency of prayer. 
And having it to give, is it not the worst miser- 
liness to withhold it? If prayer will do some 
things that can be done in no other way for 
men, shall those who have the heavenly throne 
as their resort, and the riches of God's promise 
as the reserve on which they can draw, with- 
hold their prayer ? What inhumanity, — could 
we call it by any softer name ? — if the power 
of mh^acle were ours, and we were commanded 
to use it as did Jesus in Galilean village and 
Ju^ean city, and we would not do it ! " If we 
saw an uninterrupted series of our fellow-men 



168 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

defiling in chains before pur eyes, and then 
dropping one after the other into a dungeon of 
unknown depth and hopeless gloom, and knew 
that petitions — earnest and importunate peti- 
tions alone — could break their chains and 
secure their deliverance, what heart so obdu- 
rate as not to join in those petitions? And 
where is our compassion, where our fellow- 
feeling for our fellow-men, — to say nothing of 
our sympathy with God and Jesus Christ, — 
if we do not offer up earnest and unceasing 
prayers for a whole race of human beings, the 
greater part of whom are bond-slaves of Satan, 
and are falling, one every second, into the 
dungeon of unending despair ? Oh that the eyes 
of Christians might be opened to see what in- 
exhaustible resources are put into their hands, 
when they are permitted to pray for a spiritually 
diseased and dying world !" ^ Prayer brings down 
the Holy Spirit to human souls, so that they are 
enlightened, persuaded, converted, and saved. 
Prayer makes all other means effectual. It has 

1 Prof. Tyler, Prize Essay on Prayer for Colleges. 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA YER. 169 

power with him who desires us to pray for men, 
that through our prayer he may give the bless- 
ings that he desires to bestow, but can bestow 
only after we pray. 

Christians are invited to pray. Our Lord's 
language commands, and also it invites. It 
calls us to a choice banquet of rich privilege. 
He asks us to be happy in prayer. It is prob- 
able that more temptations address the desire 
for pleasure than any other principle in our 
nature. Satan storms our feelings. He appeals 
to our sense of vacancy, to the yearning for 
happiness. That in religion w^hich meets this 
temptation is its address to the very same 
feeling. God outbids the world. The joy in 
religion is to be superior to that in sin. And so 
Christ invites us to prayer, as to a very feast of 
delight. Not long will true prayer be joyless. 
They w^ho w^ill set themselves to have their 
happiness in communion with God, shall find 
his fruit sweet to the taste. And it must be so, 
for Christ gives no unmeaning invitations. 

And is there any other religious exercise that 



170 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE V/ORLD. 

can so increase in us the deptli and power of 
religious emotion? The want of which not a 
few complain is want of fit feeling in the pres- 
ence of the facts of religion. They mourn that 
they are not more moved by the great doctrines 
of the Bible. Prayer is the best medicine for 
this disease. If the great truths of religion do 
not affect us, if they do not stir us, it is because 
we have not prayed over them. Why, a truth 
that would thrill an angel to ecstasy may be 
believed by a man, — may be held as an un- 
doubted thing by his intellect, — and yet it may 
be only a lump of ice upon his heart. But let 
this truth be taken into the closet and prayed 
over, and it will cast out a golden grapnel that 
shall seize the emotions and lift up the sunken 
soul ver)^ far heavenward. 

The ore of the miner just as it comes from the 
mine is of little value. Ore as ore is almost use- 
less : it is to be taken and worked over, fused 
in furnaces, and to be beaten and shaped into 
articles that are needed by man. Just so in 
religion. These great doctrines of revelation 



THE CHRISTIAN IN PRA YER. 171 

are like the ore that comes out of the black- 
throated mine. They must be fused by prayer, 
and then shaped into forms that can be employed 
in actual life. One may hear sermons, study 
the thick- volume d literature of Christian libra- 
ries, may be deeply versed in doctrinal knowl- 
edge, may be at home amid the scholarly 
volumes with which Christian exegetes have 
enriched the world ; and yet, if one is not a 
praying man, all this ore of truth will be of little 
worth. If, instead of so much discussion of 
religious doctrines, we could take them more 
frequently to our closets, it would be better for^ 
the interests of truth, better for our own souls, 
and better for the world. There could then be 
no complaint of insensibility : the liveliest inter- 
est would be felt, and the truths of the gospel 
would be seen as the " power of God unto sal- 
vation" for the world. 

* * O dull of heart ! inclosed doth lie 
In each ' Come, Lord,' a ' Here am I.' 
Thy love, thy longing, are not thine, — 
Eeflections of a love divine ; 
Thy very prayer to thee was given. 
Itself a messenger from heaven." — Trench. 



THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS RECREATIONS. 



1. Recreatiok not the Cessation of Christian 

Work. 

2. Christian Views of Recreation. 

3. Principles Applied. 

4. Tendencies Considered. 



VII. 

* 

IN HIS EECREATIONS. 

A CHRISTIAN must have his recreations. 
The bow must sometimes be unbent, or 
it will be spoiled. Mind and body alike demand 
it; and religion has no forbidding word, but 
only a hint of care and caution. For lack of 
some plain distinctions as to kind and manner 
of recreation, many a good man has fallen back in 
his religious life. He felt the need of a respite 
from toil, and he took the way of the world 
rather than that of the Christian in meeting the 
need, and he goes now a cripple on crutches to 
pay for his moral carelessness. On the other 
hand, the attempt to maintain one's self stead- 
fast in one's duty, as if recreation were needless, 
as if recreation were a sin, as if it were in some 
sort the " coming down from one's great work," 
has been fruitful in evil. It has nourished a 



176 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

morbid piety. It is stern, as it should be, 
against all evil; but it lacks grace. Iron may 
be wrought, under the artist's hands, into forms 
of beauty, which, without impairing its firm- 
ness, shall minister also as a deliglit to the ey5 
of the beholder. It is possible to '^ be stead- 
fast," and yet have care for the things '' that 
are lovely and of good report." That some have 
gone too far, is no reason for our failure to go 
far enough. That some take the world for their 
law of recreation, is no reason why we should 
not seek pure and healthful recreation within 
the limits of Christian decorum. 

For, be it remembered that the recreation we 
need is not a cessation of Christian work. From 
that, no man can take any vacation. There is 
no month or week or day, or even hour, in all 
the long year, in which a man is to seek relaxa- 
tion from the bonds of Christian obligation. 
The kind of work may change. The mower is 
at work when he is whetting his scythe. The 
clergyman, seeking health amid the solitudes of 
the mountains, is serving God as reallj^ as in 



IN HIS RECREATIONS. 177 

his pulpit. The weary merchant who unbends 
at the evening hour, and romps on the carpet 
with his children at home, is not only preparing 
himself the better for to-morrow's business, but 
for to-morrow's devotion. For are not devotion 
and business and recreation all parts of the one 
great work, — the service of God ? When a 
Christian takes his recreation, he does not go 
down to the world. If worldly men do some 
of the same things, they come up to him : he 
does not descend to them. The acts may be 
the same ; but the spirit and aim is another, 
even in recreations. I am not called to put 
aside any duty of religion, because I seek my 
full night's rest ; because, weary of the noise of 
the street, I seek the quiet of home ; because, 
the season of prayer ended, I enjoy the flow of 
social wit or the charms of another's conversa- 
tion ; because, my duty to my fellow-man dis- 
charged an hour ago, as I strove to lead his 
heart to the knowledge of Christ, I now in the 
concert-hall enjoy another hour with the great 
masters of music and song. There is duty in 

8* L 



178 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

the recreation; and there is recreation in the 
duty. The duty guides as to the kind and 
amount of the recreation. And the recreation 
is all the more refreshing because not a stolen 
pleasure, but one in the line of duty. 

There are also many recreations once es- 
teemed hurtful that are coming to be regarded 
with more favor by Christians. But who shall 
say that they were not once hurtful ? The 
associations connected with some forms of rec- 
reation have entirely changed. The influences 
that surround some pleasures may be Avholly 
unlike those of a former generation. What, 
too, if now and then good men were a little 
narrow in their view? Is the inference therefore 
to be drawn that we are to take up all the 
world's gayeties, and use them with a Christian 
use ? By no means. Some of them cannot be 
so used. All the past history of some forms of 
worldly amusement shows that their tendency 
is steadily downward. There may have been 
sometimes narrowness among Ciiristians. But 
it must not be forgotten that what is called by 



IN HIS recreations: 179 

worldly men narrow, is, from oar higher point 
of view, not narrowness but breadth. Our 
horizon is wider than that of worldly men. 
We see more truly the influences of an act. 
It is to be more carefully pondered. We can- 
not rush upon it thoughtlessly. The wishes 
of the world, the wishes of our own partially 
sanctified souls, are not our law. We have 
certain touchstones. We have principles to 
apply before we decide. That Christians are 
a little slow in such things is for their praise : 
they are weighing tendencies ; they are mark- 
ing results. Some things the great sancti- 
fied common-sense of good men has allowed, 
some other things have been just as distinctly 
rejected, and some tluDgs are yet upon proba- 
tion. It is true that right or wrong, in things 
commanded in the Scriptures, does not depend 
upon parallels of latitude or the succession of 
generations. But in the broad realm of '' per- 
mitted things," time and place are both to be 
consulted. A man not yet an old man relates 
his first reproof from the lips of a venerable 



180 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

deacon in the cliurch. He was a boy-convert, 
— an unusual circumstance in that rural neigh- 
borhood at that day. The morning after he 
had united with the church, he took part in a 
game of ball on the village green, to the great 
scandal not only of those who were watchful 
for scandal, but of nearly all the community. 
It was certain that the other boys of the school 
looked upon it as a yielding of his religious 
profession. And hence the wise reproof of the 
deacon, as he urged some form of exercise in 
which the convert's act would not be misun- 
derstood. It was not narrowness, but breadth, 
in the reprover. But to-clay, in our changed 
circumstances, the boy-convert might need to 
be advised to do that very act which was 
inexpedient fifty years ago. To refuse the 
game on the score of reUgion would, to-day, 
be the cause of scandal, and make religion a 
reproach. 

When a party of Christian gentlemen were 
almost the only visitors at a certain seaboard 
resort, they used the nine-pin alley every day. 



IN HIS RECREA TIONS, 181 

They found pleasure and profit in the exercise. 
But when, on the succeeding week, a roystering 
party, far outnumbering them, came to the same 
hotel, and spent hours at the alley, using the 
games for gambling, they were in danger of be- 
ing misunderstood ; and so these Christian men 
wisely held that what was ''lawful was not 
expedient." The worldly party called them 
hypocrites, declaring that they would do pri- 
vately and by themselves what they would not 
do before others. But there was any thing but 
hypocrisy in the case of those Christian gentle- 
men. They were elsewhere brave enough to do 
right, as were not the roystering and worldly 
party. And they were brave enough to deny 
themselves a " permitted pleasure " when the 
act would have been esteemed a dishonor to 
their profession of piety. And when one of 
them, determmed that none should call him a 
hypocrite, after the usual talk about "not caring 
for Mrs. Grundy," w^ent back to the alley, it 
was only to listen to terms of coarser profanity, 
coined freshly to wound his ear, and to learn 



182 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

afterwards how thoroughly he was despised. 
And here is found the reason why some games, 
like that just named, are proscribed at one time 
and place, and elsewhere, and at other times, 
commended. The student at one college was 
expelled for practising the very gymnastics that 
are prescribed in the curriculum of another. 
And rightly ; for the associations in the one 
case were demoralizing, in the other they were 
healthy and pure. Nor in the adoption of such 
gymnastics is the claim just that the world has 
gained on the church. The thing is morally 
different even when physically the same. What 
is claimed by a loose worldliness is one thing, 
and what is permitted by broader Christian 
views is quite another. 

And there are amusements to which a Chris- 
tian's attention is sometimes asked, where he is, 
in Mr. Bushnell's words,^ ''free to use but too 
free to need them." But the broad, unqualified 

1 Bushnell's '' Sermons on Living Subjects/' page 375. 
From the text in 1 Cor. x. 27 : *'If any of them that believe 
not bid you to a feast, and ye be disposed to go, whatsoever is 
set before you eat." 



IN HIS RECREA TIONS. 183 

statement of this principle is certainly unfortu- 
nate ; its range of application is very narrow, 
applying only to things clearly permissible, but 
never to things which are doubtful ; never to 
things where the principle of Christian expedi- 
ency comes in. Nor does it take any notice of 
what will or will not please Christ ; of what 
will or will not help one's own moral develop- 
ment ; of what will or will not be of benefit to 
other men. It is edge without breadth. It is 
the happy turn of a saying, but not the state- 
ment of a far-reaching principle. It may have 
a meaning for the special case in hand, — the 
going to a particular feast, — but the statement 
as a principle of what was true in a single in- 
stance, the adoption of the phrase, '*• if ye be 
disposed to go," as a rule of duty^ is too obvi- 
ously unsafe to need refutation. In the realm 
of the conscience^ when revelation is wanting, a 
man '' is a law unto himself." For the law of 
duty to God was written once on man's nature, 
though now the handwriting is sadly marred 
and battered. But it was all the law he had, 



184 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

and in that sense he was a " law unto himself." 
But, even in the realm of conscience, revelation 
is needed to re cut the letters of the half-effaced 
law on the tablets which have been thrown 
down and broken ; to retrace in deeper lines the 
old handwriting of God. But when any man 
shall go down into the human heart, among its 
deeper passions and prejudices, and utter there 
the doctrine of a '' man a law unto himself," he 
is putting the crown that belongs on the head 
of the Eternal Lawgiver upon fallible man ; he 
is lifting mortal wish into the dignity of a divine 
law, and giving to human license a boon that 
God has never yet given to Christian liberty. 

And our recreations, as a part of our Chris- 
tian living, come in under the principles which 
were discussed in a former part of this essaj^, — 
the principles that run through the entire New 
Testament. 

In our recreations we are to ask always 
whether this thing will 'please Christ, If we 
can know — and, with a good degree of cer- 
taintv, a devout and studious Christian can 



IN HIS RECREA TIONS. 185 

know it — what will please him, what he would 
have done had he been here with our mission to 
fulfil, if we can discern '' the mind of Christ," 
then we have a principle that will never fail us. 
For is not the Christian to reproduce in our 
altered circumstances the life of Christ ? And 
is it not certain that he is near? 

" But warm, sweet, tender, even yet 
A present help is He. 
And faith still has its Olivet ; 
And love its Galilee. 

** The healing of his seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain : 
We touch him in lifers throng and press, 
And we are whole again. 

** To Thee our full humanity. 
Its joys and pains belong ; 
We bring our varied gifts to Thee, 
And Thou rejectest none." 

Whittier. 

Some would ask about duties, "What would 
Christ have done?" bat it seems a degradation 
to their idea of Christ to think of him as caring 
about our recreations. But let us suppose that 



186 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

his mission was so unlike ours that in his earthly 
work he felt no need of such seasons of rest, 
would it follow that we do not need them, and 
that he would not condescend to order them for 
us ? True, we have not many instances of such 
periods on record in the history of his life. 
Some have said that it is not on record that he 
ever laughed. No more is it on record that he 
practised the usual daily ablutions, or cared for 
the decencies of apparel. It is not on record 
that his head was covered from the sun or the 
rain. And the list of things not mentioned 
about him as a man would fill pages. What 
then? Will any man reason that these ordi- 
nary acts of manhood were not done by him, 
and should not be by us ? 

But is it quite so clear that he whose weari- 
ness of body is expresslj^ recorded did not need 
and did not take periods of rest, of relaxation 
from severer duties ? See him Id those wondrous 
word-pictures of the evangelists, as he goes out, 
on the evenings after his toilsome days, to the 
Bethany home. He craves rest, sympathy, the 



IN HIS RECREA TIONS, 187 

refreshing that comes from intercourse with 
other souls. And just there he is teaching us 
of tTie value of home as a recreation. 

Some one has said that there are '' no homes 
in America." That saying, if not quite true, is 
too near the truth in many instances. God in- 
stituted the family, and the family craves a 
home. That home is to be the great centre of 
recreation. Its comforts, conveniences, pleas- 
ant appointments, are to invite every member 
of the household to pass most of his leisure 
hours within its happy doors. Especially must 
the younger members be made to love the 
household, to find their comforts and spend the 
most of their evenings there. Is it said that 
only large wealth, or at least an abundance be- 
yond that which most can hope to gain, are, in 
that case, needed to adorn and enrich one's 
home ? No, we say, not wealth nor even a com- 
petence is needed. The plain farmer, the 
plain mechanic, can put, occasionally, a good 
book on the centre-table ; can take an instruc- 
tive paper or magazine ; can hang a few prints 



188 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

or chromos on his walls ; can get some sort of a 
musical instrument; can provide a few simple 
implements for drawing, if any of the younger 
members of the family have tastes that way, — 
in short, he can so arrange as to be much within 
doors himself in the leisure evening hours, and 
to make the household happy at home. If it be 
said that to provide all these things costs money, 
the quick reply is that they do not cost so much 
as do the recreations outside of home. Either 
at home or outside of it, the younger mem- 
bers of a household will have their recreations. 
Theatres, billiards, late suppers, and all that 
class of things, cost. Better pay heavily for 
other things at home than for those ! Nor think 
that one can be excused from giving himself, 
his own presence, his personal attention, to that 
which is to interest the household. Father and 
mother interested, the children will be ; the 
young people will be. We must keep in with 
the young, in order to keep young ourselves, 
and so be able to guide them. It is harder to 
give this personal presence than any thing else. 



IN HIS RECREATIONS, 189 

Lodges, clubs, social and political gatherings, 
all are taking time and energy that are needed 
for home duty and home recreation. If parents 
are often out, the young people of the family 
will be ; and there is no sadder sign than to see 
one go for his recreations very much away from 
home. Something is wrong where there is the 
wish to wander. If the crying sin of the age 
is the neglect of family training, is not the rea- 
son to be found in the fact that the duty of 
making home happy is not enough understood 
and practised. What resources of amusement 
in the household, what games of skill without 
chance, what plays that move to mirth, what 
encounters of wit, what discussion of current 
themes, what stores of pleasure in volumes of 
travel, in poem, in well-chosen fiction and biog- 
raphy, in neighborly conversation with intelli- 
gent callers of like sympathies and aims ? Home 
is the first and last and best source of recrea- 
tion. The Master had his Nazareth home ; and, 
when compelled to make a new home at Caper- 
naum, he chose the house of Peter ; and, in his 



190 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

last days, lie left the temple each evening for 
the home of Lazarus and the Bethany sis- 
ters. He consecrated home-life. He made it a 
sweeter thing. Who can doubt but that, as far 
as possible, he threw off a portion of his heavy 
load ; that, the taunt of Pharisee and the sneer 
of Sadducee heard no more, he unbent in these 
households, and spoke words of kindly, broth- 
erly, cheerful sympathy ? 

We find him also at the Cana marriage. He 
is indeed a pecxiliar guest. But he helps out 
the host in the embarrassment of the occasion, 
and the beginning of his miracles is the sanctifi- 
cation of social life. He adds to the happiness 
as well as rouses the reverent wonder of the 
guests. He is no enthusiast railing at social 
pleasure, and urging the solitude of a hermit's 
cell to those who would be holy. God is the 
author of the family, and Jesus the Son honors 
his Father's institution. Did he see in it a 
shelter, a guidance ; a source of the needed 
social recreation ; a place where, under the sanc- 
tions alike of human and divine love, we might 



IN HIS RECREATIONS, 191 

first be liappy in God, and next be happy 
through the sanctified use of every part of this 
wondrous nature with which God has endowed 
us ? Our Lord honored home. He would have 
us do the same. For home has uses infinitely 
above those of mere shelter and rest and sus- 
tenance. Here our moral and social wants are 
to find largely their direction, their culture, and 
often their supply. Household piety, the train- 
ing for this world and for that to come, the 
pure, healthful pleasures that give us nerve and 
tone for the severer tasks, — all these are in 
God's plan of home. And on them all rests 
the tender, loving benediction of our Lord. 

Nor can we forget that, in our recreations, 
we are under the law of a Christian self-regard. 
We owe a duty to ourselves. We must do 
ourselves no harm in this thing. Recreation 
must never come to be our business in life. 
We have no right to look upon duty as drudg- 
ery, and recreation as the only joy. 

God has mercifully ordained the night for 
rest. It is his plan that each day's weariness 



192 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

shall be taken out of a man by the following 
night's rest. Some will not do this. They 
crowd seven days' labor into six, and are so 
weary that they give the Sabbath to merely 
bodily rest, — the rest that should have been 
taken on the six previous nights. So that God's 
two great institutions — the night for physical 
rest, and the Sabbath for the rest of mind and 
soul — are both perverted. Then comes the need 
of a month's respite in summer, in which one 
strives to " get rested," as the saying is ; strives 
to make up for the robbery of sleep and the 
robbery of Sabbaths during the previous eleven 
months. What is God's plan ? It is this ; a 
day's work, and its weariness taken away by a 
full night's rest ; a Sabbath, and its hours re- 
lieved of secular thought as well as secular la- 
bors, and used in another wa}^; — the mind and 
heart dedicated to another class of inquiries and 
pursuits ; refreshed by a new course of reflection 
and feeling, so that the man is in a sense to be 
re-created. For the idea of recreation is not 
the cessation of all thought and care ; but the 



IN HIS RECREATIONS. 193 

employment of our mental powers in some new 
line, the breaking of the chain of ordinary- 
business and care by another kind of business 
and care. 

It is marvellous to mark how attention to the 
matter of sound sleep in its full measure has to 
do with the vigor of one's powers. Your men 
who are thoroughly wide-awake men are the 
men who will have their sleep. And your well- 
preserved men — the men that keep younger 
than their years — are men who are regular and 
persistent in this thing. And when to this habit 
there is joined that of careful Sabbath observ- 
ance, when worldly care is broken by the new 
duties and thoughts and feelings of the Lord's 
Day, when the pulse of worldly solicitude is 
calmed and steadied by the full use of the 
opportunities of public worship and private 
devotion, the man's ''profiting will appear to 
all." Then the summer vacation will not need 
to be used for sleep, to make amends for the 
dissipations of overwork ; but its days will 
be glad, exulting days, that are brimful and 

9 M 



194 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

overrunning with healthful exhilaration,— body, 
mind, and soul all throbbing with life. 

And how many an amusement that men crave 
is condemned by the very fact that it is un- 
natural and destructive of bodily health ! It 
carries with it late hours, the eating of richest 
food at unusual times. How many a recreation 
is far too costly in what it requires as its 
accessories ! It damages one part even when 
it benefits another part of our nature. 

And the further principle — ix.^ that of doing 
good to others — is not to be forgotten in our 
recreations. One of the great objects of a 
Christian's life, he is to have it either directly 
or indirectly in mind in his hours of relaxation. 

Out into the world of society he must some- 
times go. Home is, indeed, first. And less often 
than many think do they need to go beyond it. 
Yet sometimes we must meet men in society. 
There are society nien and society women. 
They have that gift and grace and aptness of 
speech, that charm and magnetism of manner, 
those pecuhar endowments, that fit them to 



IN HIS RECREA TIONS. 195 

guide and sway the social circle, where their 
presence is always welcome. Thousands of 
persons have set themselves to the careful cult- 
ure of their gifts, that they may, in this way, 
gain power over their fellow-men. And a Chris- 
tian should strive to be influential in this thing. 
Let him " covet the best gifts." For he is not 
to seek human applause, but human welfare. 
He can talk for Christ. When not speaking on 
themes directly religious, his speech can be 
''seasoned with salt;" the ''savor of Christ" 
may be in it, whatever the topic. 

It is plain that a Christian cannot be present 
at those amusements where the world gives the 
law. There are some diversions managed by 
Avorldly men as worldly men. And though they 
crave the presence of the Christian as a sanction 
for what is to their own minds questionable, he 
can never go into such things without dishonor- 
ing " the name by which he is called." They 
know that religion demands a difference, and 
they understand that this difference should come 
out in the life. Thej^ know that the choice of 



196 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

a man's pleasures determines liis character. 
They know that some pleasures are just worldly- 
pleasures, — not recreations, save in name. 
The world gives the law of them, and religious 
words would be out of place while enjoying 
them. It is simply and clearly inconsistent for 
any man with a high object, such as the Chris- 
tian professes to have, to take an interest in 
those things. He damages his influence thereby. 
He is on an enemy's ground. And he is there, 
not as a soldier to fight, but as a lukewarm 
friend to parley Avith the foe. '' It would be 
easy to argue by the hour in favor of parties of 
pleasure, and theatres, and ball-rooms, and all the 
vanity of fashionable life. But since the begin- 
ning of the world, no professed Christian ever 
dreamed that he was imitating the example of 
Jesus Christ, or honoring the Christian religion, 
at a theatre, a ball-room, or a splendid party 
of pleasure. And equally clear would be the 
decision in reference to a multitude of pleasures 
which it is needless to specify. If these things 
were ^favorable to the designs of the Founder 



IN HIS RECREA TIONS. 197 

of Christianity, they might, they should, have 
been enjoined. But how singular would have 
been such directions in the New Testament! 
How marvellous would appear such a command, 
when placed beside those which enjoin prayer, 
spirituality, humility, and self-denial ! " ^ In 
doing these things one does not please Christ, 
nor help his own development, nor do others 
good. No man goes into these things for any 
such end. He passes by a thousand sources of 
genuine, healthful Christian recreation, for the 
sake of getting at those pleasures which are of 
the world, which never have been and never can 
be consecrated \)\ any religious using of them. 
And in the whole matter of amusement we 
are to watch tendencies. To what will this or 
that thing naturally lead ? '' There are sports 
and exercises which, abstractedly considered, 
appear fair and plausible, but which, when 
considered in their tendencies and ultimate 
issues, are perilous to the highest interest of 
the soul. And surely these, as well as open 

1 Albert Barnes. 



198 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

and flagrant violation of positive divine injunc- 
tion, ought to be scrupulously avoided. If, for 
instance, games which do not necessarily require 
money-stakes in the family, but which would 
tend to such in other association where money 
hazards are common, — and especially if great 
proficiency in playing were attained by practice 
in youth, — then to admit and encourage such, 
involves tremendous responsibility. If concerts 
and shows produce tastes likely afterward to 
seek indulgence in operas and theatres, such 
ought, undoubtedly, to be avoided. And if 
dancing, however graceful in youth, leads to 
gayety of worldly associations and life, it ought 
not to be encouraged in family education and 
training. Whatever may be advanced in pro- 
fessed philosophy on such pastimes and exercises, 
they are so dangerous in their possible conse- 
quence that they are to be shunned and not 
indulged. Wisdom subscribes to the saying 
that it is better to keep far away from danger 
than advance toward it. In Mr. Wesley's words, 
it is not wise to try how much poison can be 



IN HIS RECREATIONS. 199 

• 

eaten without being killed. And whatever en- 
dangers the future morals and religion of the 
young ought to be prohibited." 

It was the testimonj^ of James Brainerd Taj^lor 
that recreations, rightly managed, helped rather 
than hindered his spiritual life. Many can tes- 
tify to a similar experience. If recreations did 
not do this that were fatal to them ; for they 
could not then be allowed. But pleasing to 
Christ when rightly used, helpful to one's whole 
being, and beneficial to us in our ministrations 
unto other souls, we enter upon them not 
with any hesitating step, as if letting down 
the dignity of the Christian life, but heartily 
doing these and all other things, as in the sight 
of the Lord. Thus our recreations become not 
a worldly bait, but a Christian benefit. They 
are not outside our duty, but a part of it, 
and so we are the happier in them. They are 
not an end, but only a means. And on them, 
as heartily as on the more direct services of 
religious duty, we can crave the blessing of 
God. 



THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS BUSINESS. 



9* 



1. His Duty to Succeed. 

2. Keligion a Help and not a Hindrance. 

3. Business Eight in Kind and Degree. 

4. Christian Honor. 

5.^ The Gains of Business. 

6. Money has a Fixed Moral Value. 

7. Principles Applied. 

8. The Spiritual Use of Worldly Things. 

9. Irradiation. 



VIII. 

THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS BUSINESS. 

" /^F what did he die?" asked Alexander, 
when some one told him of a friend's 
death. '' Of having nothing to do," was the 
answer. " But," replied the great conqueror, 
"that is enough to kill even a general." A 
Christian must have something to do ; he is to 
add to the wealth or skill or learning of the 
world. He has no discharge from this war 
during his earthly life. He may not be a drone 
in the human hive. Eden's curse was not work, 
but work " in sorrow." When the sorrow is 
taken out of one's heart by the divine grace 
his work may be his joy, and in doing it he may 
best serve his God. When a certain New Eng- 
land merchant waited on his pastor to tell him 
of his earnest desire to engage in work more 
distinctively religious, the pastor heard him 



204 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

kindly. The mercliant said, '' My heart is so 
full of love to God and to man that I want to 
spend all my time in talking with men about 
these things." ''No," said the pastor; "go 
back to your store and be a Christian over your 
counter. Sell goods for Christ, and let it be 
seen that a man can be a Christian in trade." 
Years afterwards the merchant rejoiced that 
he had followed the advice, and the pastor re^ 
joiced also in a broad-hearted and open-handed 
brother in his church, who was awake not only 
to home-interests but to those great enterprises 
of philanthropy and learning which are the 
honor of our age. The merchant is dead; but 
the great society, with a national reputation, and 
the college, sending forth yearly its class of 
trained young men, both of which received his 
noble benefactions, are still feeling the result of 
the wise advice of the pastor and the wise deci- 
sion of the merchant. 

A Christian ouglit to he a success in life. He 
is to strive earnestly to succeed in worldly 
things ; he is to secure property if he can ; he 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 205 

is to get fame if he can; lie is to acquire learn- 
ing if he can. In some way he ought to be a 
success. Not that worldly success is a final aim, 
but it is to be an aim. In it and through it one 
is to do good ; and this success is to be legiti* 
mate. There are short cuts to wealth. There 
is the course taken by the man who says, '' I 
will be rich any way ; " and '' any way " with 
•him means the nearest way of wrong. If a 
man sets out to be wealthy, and is shrewd, he 
can generally do it in one of two methods. 
There is the short cut of fraud, of trickery, of 
dishonesty, in which one is careful to cover all 
his tracks and keep just outside the clutches of 
the law. Such a man quickly distances the men 
whom he calls fogies. He succeeds; but the 
wealth slips quick, and with it goes his charac- 
ter, his manliness, his self-respect. The oth^r 
way is longer round. It takes years to get over 
the course ; but when a man has got there he 
has made an achievement, and he knows that it 
is not through luck, but through work, with the 
blessing of God upon it. And in the horrible 



206 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

haste to be rich which has seized like a very 
epidemic on so many in our time, a man who 
can come up honestly, and, by integrity, win 
his way to a recognized success, is doing the 
world a vast service. For, in spite of hundreds 
of instances to the contrary, there is a senti- 
ment abroad that all the shrewdness belongs to 
rascals; and that all success comes by devices 
and by tactics that are really different in nothing, 
from wickedness. It is surprising to find how 
among the great middle classes of societj^ — 
ranking now for a moment by one of the most 
common and worst ways of ranking, that of 
money — what a feeling is engendered towards 
the more wealthy. It is almost always taken 
for granted that a rich man who has made his 
money in trade has done it unjustly. But the 
feeling is all a mistake. No doubt men have 
become rich through fraud ; but have not thou- 
sands become poor through fraud ? Is not 
wrong-doing the cause of a large part of the 
poverty of the world ? Shall we therefore call 
all poor men fraudulent? But that would be 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 207 

as unreasonable as to call all rich men dishonest. 
And yet, since the impression so widely prevails, 
one great need of our times is men who will 
enter into business, and go up and on to com- 
petency and even to wealth, and do it with such 
evident Christian honesty as to confound the 
slander that wealth comes only by fraud as 
against the rich, and by oppression as against 
the poor. 

As with success in securing wealth, so with 
other forms of thrift in life. A distinguished 
naturalist, asked why he had not secured more 
property, replied, '' I have never had time to 
make money." It is perhaps nearer the truth 
to say that there are men whose ambition is in 
another line, — a hne measured not by length 
of bank-book. There are men who, not despis- 
ing money nor holding those who make it as 
especially worldly and unspiritual, have another 
standard. An honest fame is their ambition. 
Here, too, there are low demagogue tricks, base 
means of gaining place and power. But the 
positions of honor and trust have a legitimate 



208 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

attraction. And if one can take them and 
honor God in them, and be as simple and 
praj^erful and devoted in them as out of 
them, then one may be able to show the world 
that religion can grace any station, and tKat a 
servant of Christ can honor a position more 
than any position can honor him. The world 
wants men that can he trusted. It is in danger 
of losing faith in the power of human nature 
to withstand the corruptions that assail those 
who are in conspicuous places. It is in danger 
of thinking that piety is a very pretty thing 
for a child ; a very excellent thing for people in 
poverty ; for those who are so low down as to 
have no earthly comfort ; for people on very 
wretched sick-beds ; for cripples ; for the blind 
and palsied ; and for all manner of unsuccessful 
souls. The world needs to see that piety is 
not only the best of consolations, but the most 
thrifty of all things; that it becomes a man 
anywhere; that it always makes him the more 
a man ; that there is nothing low-spirited and 
mean about it, but that everywhere it tends 
to honor and success. 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 209 

It is needed however, that we have, some 
care as to the way in which we use that word 
success. There are souls to whom it is given 
to succeed only by failure. Their plans of 
wealth, honor, learning, have miscarried. They 
are poor and without name in the world. Are 
they, therefore, failures ? By no means. Tak- 
ing the earthly failure with the right spirit, 
and using it as moral capital, they have laid 
up far more treasure in heaven and gained 
immortal honor on the books of God, — those 
books to be opened so soon. 

A Chiistian is to go into business that he 
may take off the reproach that care for the 
other world injures a man for this world. 
What a strange idea this which makes men 
think there is something contaminating in 
worldly things ! How utterly have such souls 
misunderstood what the Bible says about un- 
worldliness ! It is the world's misuse that the 
Bible so sharply condemns, — a misuse so com- 
mon as to color the language of the Bible ; 
a misuse that we are to abate and banish as 

N 



210 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

soon as possible by a better Christian living. A 
man go out of business because a Christian! 
That is the very reason why he should stay in 
business and consecrate it and transfigure it. 
Through that business the higher glory is to 
shine. It can all be done for Christ. 

This is true, of course, only of honest busi- 
ness. There are kinds of employment that are 
in conflict with even the semblance of religion. 
A man's work must be for the supply of some 
honest want among men. It must be a natural 
want, a healthful want. His business must be 
one that really adds to the comfort of the world. 
He may deal in things that the stomach craves 
or that the eye craves. Articles for the parlor or 
person, since they gratify the taste for beauty, 
are just as really a supply for an honest want 
as coal and flour. There is a use of the beauti- 
ful as well as the needful. God made not only 
the corn that waves on the plain, but the lily 
that blooms in the valley ; and both are equally 
for man's use. But any business that ministers 
mainly to evil passion, that is a violation of the 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 211 

great law, '' Do to others as ye would that they 
should do to you," has a brand upon it, — a 
brand that shows it set apart unto Satan. And 
about that business a Christian is commanded, 
'^ Touch not, taste not, handle not." 

Right in kind, one's business must be right in 
method. It does not avail to say that a ques- 
tionable thing is done by all engaged in a given 
business or profession. When the hatter brands 
his hat "Paris," or the watchmaker puts '' Gen- 
eva " on his American watch, it is not enough to 
plead that it deceives nobody. Why the foreign 
branding, if it is not intended to commend goods 
under false pretences ? Why say the cloth is 
German when made in America, and why cover 
the statement with the mental explanation that 
it is made in the same way and is of equal qual- 
ity with the imported article. And in all the 
methods of advertising one's wares, and the 
mode of raising money to meet one's liabilities, 
in the taking care of one's paper and the keeping 
of one's word of mouth inviolable in business 
transactions, a Christian is to be above reproach. 



212 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

One of the most difficult things to define in 
business life is that word Tionorahle, And yet 
it is a definite thing that men mean when they 
use that word. It is not only doing justly, but 
doing it with a certain delicacy and interior 
sense of what the right really is. It is the fair- 
ness of trade. If a man knows what honor is, 
he will need no definition of it. If he does not 
know it, no definition can tell him. Honor is 
demanded both of employer and of employe. It 
ought not to be true that a band of workmen 
must be watched to get them to give an honest 
day's work. It ought not to be true that a 
Christian is ever a time-server. There is honest 
work which a man covenants to give another for 
a definite price. Slighted work is not honest 
work, even when covered with veneer and 
varnish. But if the work requires veneer and 
varnish, let the veneer and the varnish be put 
on faithfully. Honor belongs to the hand-toiler 
as well as to the brain-toiler : to the man before 
the counter as well as to the man behind it. 
No man can hope to do business without com- 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 213 

petition; and in nothing is there more danger 
of looking upon others as unfair and as lacking 
in honor than when two men' are competitors 
in the same line of business. The tendency to 
misrepresent another's goods and unduly to 
praise one's own ; to charge him with unfair- 
ness if in any one point he succeeds better than 
ourselves, is very strong. In what is termed 
business life there are two prime factors, — 
faculty and capital. Says another: ''It is hon- 
orable to lay out at fair interest the capital 
w^hich is yours. It is precisely as honorable to 
use to the last item of value the faculty which 
nature has committed to your charge. If you 
see the gleam of a gold vein where I saw only 
clay, the reward is justly yours ; if you know 
the ground where corn will grow better than 
I, your sheaves must be more numerous than 
mine ; if you hava stronger sinew and more 
perseverance, and choose to toil more hours in 
the westering sun after I have unyoked my 
team, you must lay a wider field under seed 
than I. And no manly feeling will permit me 



214 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

to accuse you when you work your faculties to 
the utmost: the pearls are for him that dives, 
the golden apples for him that can climb. A 
man who expects less from his competitors than 
an unsparing use of all their means is a coward ; 
a man who aims at having more than the full 
use of his own is a churl." 

And into business a Christian ought to go 
that he may use the profits of trade for the 
interests of religion. Our land has had its 
merchant princes who have felt that business, 
not only in its method but in its gain, was for 
Christian ends. There are noble names on the 
roll-call of the dead, — names of merchants, 
lawyers, bankers, who did business for Christ. 
N. R. Cobb, Garrat N. Bleecker, Norman Smith, 
Richard Fletcher, are well known ; and their 
example has incited many of the living. Plain 
farmers — quiet men who had read the Bible 
and the newspaper — have come forward ; 
and seeing that seed-corn is sure, when planted, 
to bring the harvest, have furnished colleges 
and seminaries with ample financial endowment, 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 215 

and we are beholding everywhere the fruitage. 
And bankers and merchants are coming to feel 
the Christian obligations of wealth, and are 
doing their duty. They are endowing chairs in 
our institutions of learning ; they are seeing to 
it that our great enterprises at home and abroad 
in such things as buildings, as professorships, 
and as scholarships, are not allowed to suffer. 
They are using wealth for Christ. And thus 
a beginning has been made. For after all it is 
only a beginning. And let our men of wealth 
learn that not only does God require this thing 
at their hands, but men also expect them to be 
leaders in philanthropy. The house one builds 
with large wealth may perish ; the children who 
inherit money without having learned that great 
lesson, the "value of a dollar," may be injured 
by what they receive. But if a man shall wisely 
invest in the departments of philanthropy and 
of a Christian education, he will be the gainer 
himself, and he will bless his fellow-men and 
honor his God. 

Nor must it be forgotten that this is the era 



216 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

of secularism in education. Over tlie sea the 
war is boldly proclaimed. Science is to be 
taught irreligiouslj^, with no recognition of any 
thing higher than man, and with nothing higher 
in man than his body. The same feeling is at 
work in our own land. It pleads for an educa- 
tion that is not Christian in its tone. It is true 
that the institutions of learning which have 
been established on any other than a Christian 
basis, in order to any thing like success, have 
been obliged to get about the peculiar conditions 
imposed by their founders as best they could. 
The experiment will, however, be continued. 
Perhaps religion will not encounter absolute 
and direct hostility. It will rather be quietly 
ignored by a vast class of educators. But the 
moral and religious bearing of all studies — 
save, perhaps, that of the pure mathematics 
— is a thing which we, as Christians, cannot 
consent to see ignored. We must have insti- 
tutions of learning where the tone — the most 
important thing about any institution — shall be 
healthy and Christian. And in these days when 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 217 

it is getting to be common for worldly men to 
spend money in endowments in aid of secular 
education, the Christian merchants and bankers 
of this land have a work to do. They must 
be awake and liberal. Endowments everywhere 
are needed. Education is coming to be eleemos- 
ynary. No graduate of Dartmouth or Harvard 
or Brown pays any tiling like what it costs to 
give him his education. Every student is more 
or less of a beneficiary. Christian education 
costs. It can hardly be expected that those less 
favored with wealth will do much in this direc- 
tion. Here the appeal is to those broad-minded 
enough to see, and open-handed enough to give, 
where giving will do the most good. For the 
men in our higher institutions are to be, as a 
rule, the leaders of opinion. They are to shape 
the religious thought of coming generations. 

But we must not overlook the fact that there 
are open to every man, though the world may 
not call him rich, the broad avenues of benevo- 
lent enterprise. The truth is that, noble as is 

the gift of some who have wealth, the great 
10 



218 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

mass of benevolent contributions in onr land 
comes from the large middle class of the Chris- 
tian commmiity. They support mainly our 
churches ; they make the larger contribution 
to missions ; they feel quickest and respond 
noblest, in proportion to their ability, to the 
calls that come to us on almost every Sabbath 
and on almost every other day as well. It is 
coming to be seen that money has a moral value : 
that there is a direct proportion between the 
wise expenditure of so many dollars and so much 
good done to men ; that so much cash sends so 
many missionaries ; builds so many churches or 
chapels ; prints and distributes so many books ; 
and brings, taking a given number of years 
together, about so much moral advance to the 
cause of Christ. The moral value of money 
is getting to be an estimated thing as well as 
its commercial worth ; and no Christian is ex- 
empted from a share in this Christian commerce. 
Christian fellowship is simply a divine partner- 
ship unto this end. Let no man dream what he 
would do had he wealth. The poor man can 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 219 

exercise himself in benevolence as well as the 
rich. Every man may consecrate business gains 
— all of them — to God, and then take what part 
of them is needed for personal and for family 
wants. It is all God's property, and that only 
is to be spent on ourselves which he allows and 
will approve. The motto of the Redemptionists 
is, " All for Thee, O Lord;" and of the Jesuits, 
'' For the greater glory of God." The final end 
is not ''to make monej^" or "save money" or 
" lay by monej^" but to " use money for Christ." 
Business is not to be pursued as something 
distinct from " serving God." The pew and 
the counting-room are alike to be consecrated. 
When the Karen convert was presented, just 
before leaving America, with fifty dollars, some 
one asked him what articles he would buy. In 
broken English, he replied, " This no me money, 
this Jesus Christ's money." Gain is^ot ours. 
It is his who gave the faculty, guided the judg- 
ment, kept firm the health, and blessed the 
endeavor. Above all, it belongs to him who 
"bought us with a price." 



220 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

In determining our duty when in business, 
we are to make honest application of the three 
great '' principles " which have been named 
elsewhere ; namely, pleasing Christy doing the 
best for self and doing good to others. 

What would the Master have done ? How 
thrilling the thought ! We can put him, in 
imagination, in our place, — in just our situation. 
We know that he has used the tools of honest 
work. He was reputed to be the " carpenter's 
son." And by being among us, one of us, and 
doing work in his earlier years, and by taking 
his part in the family toil, he honored labor ; 
so that it is no irreverence for the busiest toiler 
to ask what Christ would have done had our 
mission been laid on him. Think of him as by 
our side, nay, in our place. We may fill up the 
outline for ourselves. When we ask what, now 
and here, about our plans, will please him, we 
see life anew. It is a very precious thing to 
translate his life into new forms, — to keep the 
spirit while we change the language into such a 
dialect that we shall be '' epistles known and 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 221 

read of all men." There is much said in our 
daj^ of consecration. It is held by many to 
touch mainly the ivill-poiver ; and this power 
cannot, of course, be excepted. But by many 
the term is plainly used in the sense of zealous 
purpose. It is man's act. It is the forcing 
one's self up and on and into a proposed state. 
Is not Paul's word better when he says, '' the 
love of Christ constraineth us " ? that is, his love 
to us seizes upon us, takes us up, transports us 
out of ourselves, and so we are thinking, feeling, 
acting for hira. It is not merely a fervid emotion. 
It is not an ecstatic state at all. It is the calm 
putting of Christ's thought in place of ours. He 
was too much in earnest to be frenzied, fevered, 
boisterous. The water ran too deep and steady; 
it had too much volume and power to be noisy. 
He was in earnest. But it was not the earnest- 
ness that exhausts itself in words, to be followed 
presently by a reaction. Oh, what life was his ! 
How steadily he kept the end in view ! His 
''Father's business," — how thoroughly it was 
done while mingling with men ! When shall we 



222 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

see those who call themselves Christians for- 
getting to talk so much about '^ my business " 
and talking more about '' my Father's busi- 
ness " ? When shall we see them desirous 
above all things to finish the work God has 
given them to do ? 

And as in his earlier so in his later days, 
the Master would teach the same consecration. 
There was a disciple who had denied him pub- 
licly. He comes to that disciple with a question 
which conveys a reproof both in itself and in 
its threefold asking. The disciple had been so 
surprised at the turn things had taken that he 
had forgotten his vows so earnestly made. And 
before this man can come back to his old alle- 
giance he must be brought again to the place 
where it will be a joy to please • Christ. Our 
Lord was faithful to this man Peter. His sin 
had been no small one. The head man of the 
apostolic band, the spokesman of his brethren, 
the most officious, the quickest to take vows of 
fidelity upon his lips, he had sadly failed. It is 
not Christhke to pass over sin. It is not a trifle, 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 223 

and is not to be set aside as a light thing. God 
did not so regard it when his threats leaped 
forth like indignant lightnings against it; nor 
did our Lord so regard it when he hung on the 
cross bearing our sins. It is the mark of su- 
perficiality in religion, of shallow experience, 
sometimes of terrible error in vital doctrine, to 
treat sin lightly. Our Lord did not do it with 
Peter. He did not say it was a blemish, and of 
little account ; a mere mistake, a pardonable 
weakness that love can easily overlook. Our 
religion is a holy religion ; onr God a holy God ; 
our Saviour a holy Christ; and holiness con- 
demns always all sin. Our Lord pressed the 
threefold denial of Peter upon him ; and he 
did it in the most effectual way. A set speech 
of reproof would have roused Peter's impulsive 
soul and loosened his rash tongue. And so, 
without saying a word about the denial, he 
makes Peter think about it and condemn him- 
self for it. No needless pain does our Lord ever 
inflict. But sin must be seen as sin; and the 
Great Physician will probe to the very botton^ 



224 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

of the wound. He is faithful enough to give 
pain where a man ought to be pained. In his 
earlier life our Lord reproved with a gentle 
reproof the mother who wanted her boy to do 
something that was not his '' Father's business ; " 
and here, among his last days on earth, he is 
faithful in putting the sin of his erring disciple 
directly before him. And we are not only to 
own sin where we have failed to be Christlike, 
but are to go further. We are to get over on 
the other side ; are to take part against ouvBelves ; 
are to look at it through Christ's eyes; are to 
use his infinitely perfect scales of judgment, 
even if we be found altogether wanting. When 
applying the rule, '' What would Christ have 
done ? " Ave may be condemned. But is it not 
a joy that we have such a rule? Is it not also a 
joy if, both when we are alone with our own 
souls and when we are out with our fellow-men, 
we find ourselves striving to know and do the 
''mind of Christ"? 

Our Lord craves love. This same Peter was 
asked three times, '' Lovest thou me"? The 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 225 

heart of Christ spoke out there. It mattered 

not that Peter's love at best was a httle thing 

compared with Christ's great love to him. It 

matters not now that any human heart holds, 

when full, but a drop compared with that ocean. 

It is a human heart that Christ wants. Nor is 

it for the luxury of love that he would have 

Peter's affection. There is reappointment to 

service. " Feed my lambs, my sheep." Does 

the sense of failure ever overpower one ? Does 

one sometimes feel that having made attempts 

towards discipleship, he has sadly failed right at 

the point where he thought himself strongest ; 

that it is almost useless to try any more ? So 

felt Peter. He had forfeited confidence. Could 

he ever open his lips again ? Must he not write 

his life down as a failure ? Would it not be 

wiser for him and better for the cause if he 

should take henceforth the back seat, the lower 

room ; if he should keep out of sight, doing only 

the most humble work ? Perhaps it would be 

better that he should do no work at all. But 

see ; the Master makes out anew his commission 
10* o 



226 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

to his old work. He meets the humility of the 
newly-ordained disciple — the feeling of Peter 
that to be allowed to do anywhere the lea%t 
work would be a great favor — by saying, '' feed 
my lambs'' And Peter, willing to do this, — 
this, the lowliest errand-boy work, that suits 
only a child's capacity, — is told next that he 
may not only ^'feed" but ''keep my sheep'' 
And wherever any soul is smarting under the 
sense of defeat ; wherever out in the world and 
before men Christ has been denied by word or 
deed, the Master meets the penitent man with 
his pardoning grace and appoints him anew to 
his work. 

And in business, the principle elsewhere laid 
down of doing one's duty to one^s self^ has room 
for daily application. In the world of trade you 
are touching and being touched. You meet 
hundreds of men, each of these persons having 
his peculiarity. There is a going out of self 
to each one. It is as if you were a hundred 
men to touch each of these hundred souls. You 
give and take. They add to your life and take 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 227 

from it ; you get impressions from them as they 
from you ; you build a segment from each of 
these lives into your own ; you are the larger 
in some way for every human face you see ; for 
every tone of a human voice you hear ; for every 
unveiled soul as its thought and feeling become 
known to you. What if some of these souls are 
evil ? Then you have all the better chance to 
improve in that fine scorn and hate of all wrong 
which is the characteristic of the true gentle- 
man ; so that you may make other men's vices 
contribute to your virtues. You can build the 
better for your knowledge of their mistakes. 
And in this self-building, this acquirement of 
character, is there not through business life an 
opportunity to see and know men of very rich 
and lovely disposition, — persons whom it is 
w^orth our while to be hke ? How many virtues 
not ours now we can see as we meet men face 
to face and deal with them in the commerce of 
daily life ! Unless we are sadly inflated with 
an absurd seK-importance we shall see many a 
model grace in others that we sadly lack our- 



228 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

selves. And when there comes the temptation 
to try some trick of trade, to get some unfair 
advantage, to do the plausible wrong ''just 
once and no more," there will be help for re- 
sistance not only in the thought of the faulty 
stone which, we have seen others put into their 
edifice for their shame, but we shall also be 
helped by the remembrance that every well- 
hewn and well-placed block will add to the 
beauty and the strength of the structure we are 
building. For we are not rearing our structure 
where few can see it, but where men are build- 
ing side by side, and where we are taking mod- 
els daily from their work as well as they from 
ours. 

And so there comes in also that other princi- 
ple of regard for others^ elsewhere named. In 
business we touch them. For their good as well 
as for our own we are under the appointment 
of life. In '' making money " the man we deal 
with is the largest consideration. What does 
he get of good, of right, of truth, of happiness 
from us ? What mark are we leaving on him ; 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 229 

and, in these circumstances, what avenues of 
usefulness open themselves before us? What 
opportunities for letting liim into a better knowl- 
edge of what Christianity really is? He may 
have been unfortunate in the specimens of 
Christianity that he has met. They may have 
awakened his prejudice. He is illogically say- 
ing, '' they are all like that," or, " there is no 
reality in religion." Just as illogically will he 
be likely to say good things of all Christians ; 
that Christianity is certainly true, if he sees 
3'our consistent walk as a Christian in your 
business life. He may draw strange inferences 
from conduct ; but, knowing that he will draw 
them, we are to give him no just occasion to 
draw the inference against the truth. And 
there are fair-minded men who ought, indeed, 
to read the Bible, but who do not ; they read 
instead the lives of Christians. It would be 
better if they would take the written Word ; 
but they insist on the narrower line of reading 
the Christian life they see. But on that narrow 
line they will deal fairly. Should we object? 



230 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

Did not the Lord lay down the rule, '' by their 
fruits ye shall know them " ? And it is too 
late in the day of the world's progress to doubt 
the relation between cause and result. That 
which makes men better men say is good ; that 
which does not they say is either impotent or 
evil. In business life men are seen without 
their gloves ; they have thrown off the Sunday 
dress and the society manners ; they are most 
truly themselves ; we get nearest to the core ; 
we touch them vitally, and they feel us as a 
power when we are Christians in common life 
and amid the scenes of trade. 

But in and through all his business the 
Christian is also to maintain the spiritual out- 
look. He must keep the spiritual mind on the 
farm, at the shop or the store or the office. 
How ? By looking on his business as God's 
appointment. That old English word " call- 
ing " is a good word. It carries in it the idea 
that each man is divinely appointed to a certain 
form of business ; he has ''a call" to it. Many 
a man would pray earnestly about what to do 



IN HIS BUSINESS, 231 

in life, if he had the faintest idea that he were 
'' called to the mmistry." But when it is a 
choice between becoming a merchant or a me- 
chanic ; between being a mason or a carpenter, 
he esteems it a matter too trivial for prayer, and 
leaves it to any '' opening " to decide what he 
will do. And yet a man's whole success in life 
may depend on his decision. No ; a man's 
business is his calling. He is adapted to it ; 
takes to it ; presses it ; serves God in it ; and 
feels, if he feels rightly, that he is as really 
called to it as any minister to his pulpit or mis- 
sionary to his foreign field. What if, in another 
field, somebody no more shrewd than he has 
made more money ? One's own business that 
one has learned to know, the practice of which 
is one's joy, one's " calling," the man feels is 
better for him than any thing else. And there 
is such a thing as spiritual guidance. God, if 
sought, will guide one's taste and judgment, and 
show him in what position he can do the most 
good. And when one's work is found, a man 
can put his own personality into it. It is Tiu 



232 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

business because of Grod'B wish and will. God 
works with him and he with God. There is 
worship in his work. 

And a man is to use things temporal so that 
thej' shall remind him of things spiritual. What 
a fund of imagery there is in these outward 
things ! Think of how Jesus used them. No 
recondite and learned comparisons from far-off 
scenes and dimly known history ; no studied 
figures ; but all common things, such as men 
met in their daily toil, he used for spiritual 
teaching. And thus every thing had not only its 
common but its religious meaning to him. The 
bread men ate, the wheat from which it was 
made, the good soil on which it grew, the sow- 
ing and the reaping and the gathering into the 
barns, — all these things, which are only things 
to an unspiritual man, were full of rich spiritual 
imagery to Christ, and they should be to every 
Christian. The water we drink and with which 
we lave our bodies ; the clothing we wear ; the 
iron, the Avood, the very hay and stubble we 
see ; the outlook on morning mist or evening 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 233 

cloud, the sunny or the lowery day, every 
object that touches any bodily sense, is sugges- 
tive of spiritual things. And thus the plea that 
worldly things, of necessity, shut out heavenly 
things, is so far from being true that, if it were 
not for the one, we could say very little of 
the other. These are the alphabet, the vowels 
and consonants, that, rightly used, translate 
higher thoughts into language which renders 
spiritual utterances clear and intelligent. 

And there must also be seen in worldly things 
the irradiation, the shining through of the great 
verities of the spiritual world. Those are the 
sure, substantial things. These only endure for 
a time, and they get their meaning almost wholly 
from what of the higher, broader, spiritual world 
there is seen in and through them. Seen alone, 
they are of little worth ; they perish with the 
using. The things that are seen are temporal ; 
the things that are not seen are eternal. The 
object-glass in a telescope is, indeed, a study ; 
it is worth our careful notice ; it is skilfully 
ground and placed with greatest care in the 



234 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD. 

long, dark tube. Nobody may call it worthless. 
But, after all, who thinks very much about it 
when looking through it at the bright stars that 
bespatter the firmamental blue ? The glass is for 
bringing the far-off star '' near at hand." This 
world is never well used except as men see it in 
the light of another. Spiritual things are near, 
real, potent. They overlap these of time. They 
shine through them and give them meaning. 
Used alone these temporal things are never to 
be ; used apart from the great spiritual facts 
of redemption, of probation under the gospel, 
of eternal consequences, these temporal things 
are harmful ; used apart from the duties of the 
Christian life they are a mistake and a mischief; 
they ma}^ be for the soul's undoing. But used 
as God's Word would have us do, used so that 
a man is '' not slothful in business," but is 
^' fervent in spirit, serving the Lord," it is not 
only possible for a man to be a Christian in 
trade, but to use trade so as to '' lay up treasure 
in heaven." And so our earthly and heavenly 
life is one in spirit, and death is no break. 



IN HIS BUSINESS. 235 

So one lives right on and into heaven. So one 
lights up the shining way of the Christian life, 
and leaves for a moment the door ajar as he 
enters the further glory. 

This is the kind of broad-minded, stout- 
hearted piety the church needs and the world 
needs. It is the style and type of religion that 
best declare the Master's glory; it has the 
stamp of his hand uj^on it. 

Vainly had the pupils of a celebrated teacher 
attempted to copy a certain picture. Into it the 
master had introduced a feature of drawing^ and 
coloring that was peculiarly his own. They 
brought their pictures one after the other, a 
new picture each day for inspection, and the 
class declared them to be failures. Only one 
remained to be shown on the following morning. 
It was the work of the dullest, but yet of the 
most industrious and faithful, pupil in the class. 
He had dreaded the ordeal. The painting had 
been hung the evening before in the exhibition 
room, and a curtain thrown over it as usual. 
During the night, all alone, the master had 



236 THE CHRISTIAN IN THE WORLD, 

lifted for a moment the curtain. He had drawn 
om line^ no more ; given one touch, and left it. 
Assembled in the morning with the others, the 
painstaking student was prepared to hear the 
laughter of the class. But when the veil was 
lifted, amazed at the sight, their eyes fixed on 
the one line, they cried out, " The master^ the 
master !''' None but he could have drawn that 
line. It will be our highest glory, if, after 
striving to be "Christians in the world," on that 
great day when the veil iiS lifted, men shall 
see the task completed, and shout their praise 
as they behold the crowning work of the 
Master. 



THE END. 



Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 



MESSES. EOBEKTS BKOTHEES' PUBLICATIONS. 

Meet for Heaven. 

A STATE OF GRACE UPON EARTH THE ONLY PREP- 
ARATION FOR A STATE OF GLORY 
IN HEAVEN. 

BY THE AUTHOR OF "HEAVEN OUR HOME." 
Crown 8vo. Cloth, extra. Price $1.25. 



OPINIONS OF THE ENGLISH PRESS. 

" This forms a fitting companion to * Heaven our Home,' — a volume which 
has been circulated by thousands, and which has found its way into almost every 
Christian family." — Scottish Press. 

*' What we shall be hereafter, — whether^ our glorified souls will be like unto 
our souls here, or whether an entire change in their spiritual and moral condition 
will be effected after death, — these are questions which occupy our thoughts, and 
to these the author has principally addressed himself." — Cambridge University 
Chronicle. 

■ " The author, in his or her former work, * Heavcn our Home,' portrayed a 
social heaven, where scattered families meet at last in loving intercourse and in 
possession of perfect recognition, to spend a never-ending eternity of peace and 
love. In the present work the individual state of the children of God is attempted 
to be unfolded, and, more especially, the state of probation which is set apart for 
them on earth to fit and prepare erring mortals for the society of the saints. . . . 
The work, as a whole, displays an originality of conception, a flow of language, 
and a closeness of reasoning, rarely found in religious publications . . . The 
author combats the pleasing and generally accepted belief that death will effect 
an entire change of the spiritual condition of our souls, and that ail who enter into 
bliss will be placed on a common level." — Glasgow Herald- 

" A careful perusal of this book will make it a less easy thing for a man to cheat 
himself into the notion that death will effect, not a mere transition and improve- 
ment, but an entire change in his moral and spiritual state. The dangerous nature 
of this delusion is exhibited with great power by the author of ' Meet for Heaven.' " 
— • Stirling Observer. 

"This, like the former volume, * Heaven our Home,' by the same anonymous 
author, is a very remarkable book. Often as the subject has been handled, both 
by ancient and modern divines, it has never been touched with a bolder or a more 
masterly hand." — John C Groat Journal. 



Life in Heaven. 

THERE, FAITH IS CHANGED INTO SIGHT, AND HOPE 
IS PASSED INTO BLISSFUL FRUITION. 

A New Work by the Author of " Heaven our Home " and 

"Meet for Heaven." 

Crown 8vo. Cloth, extra. Price ^1.25. 

This new work is a companion volume to *' Heaven our Home," and " Meet 
for Heaven," and embraces a subject of very great interest, which has not been 
inclu ed in these volumes. 

The two works above mentioned have already attained in England the large 
Bale of 100,000 copies. 



MESSES. EOBEETS BEOTHEES' PUBLICATIONS. 

Heaven our Home. 

WE HAVE NO SAVIOUR BUT JESUS, AND 
NO HOME BUT HEA VEN. 

Crown 8vo. Cloth, extra. ^1.25. 

OPINIONS OF THE ENGLISH PRESS. 

" The author of the volume before us endeavors to describe what heaven is, as 
shown by the light of reason and Scripture ; and we promise the reader many 
charming pictures of heavenly bliss, founded upon undeniable authority, and de- 
scribed with the pen of a dramatist, which cannot fail to elevate the soul as well 
as to delight the imagination. . . . Part Second proves, in a manner as beautiful 
as it is convincing, the doctrine of the recognition of friends in heaven, — a subject 
of which the author makes much, introducing many touching scenes of Scripture 
celebrities meeting in heaven and discoursing of their experience on earth. Part 
Third demonstrates the interest which those in heaven feel in earth, and proves 
with remarkable clearness that such an interest exists, not only with the Almighty 
and among the angels, but also among the spirits of departed friends. We unhes- 
itatingly give our opinion that this volume is one of the most delightful productions 
of a religious character which has appeared for some time ; and we would desire 
to see it pass into extensive circulation.' ' — Glasgow Herald. 

*' This work gives positive and social views of heaven, as a counteraction to 
the negative and unsocial aspects in which the subject is so commonly presented.*' 
— English Churchman' 

" Amid the works proceeding from an over-teeming press, our attention has been 
arrested by the perusal of the above-named production, which, it seems, is wend- 
ing its way daily among persons of all denominations. Certainly * Heaven our 
Home,' whoever may be the author, is no common production." — Airdri^ 
A dvertiser. 

*' In boldness of conception, startling minuteness of delineation, and originality 
of illustration, this w^ork, by an anonymous author, exceeds any of the kind we 
have ever read." — John O^ Groat JourTtal. 

*' We are not in the least surprised at so many thousands of copies of this 
anonymous writer's being bought up. We seem to be listening to a voice and lan- 
guage which we never heard before. Matter comes at command ; words flow with 
unstudied ease : the pages are full of life, light, and force ; and the result is a 
stirring volume, which, while the Christian critic pronounces it free from affecta- 
tion, even the man of taste, averse to evangelical religion, would admit to be exempt 
from ' cant.' " — London Patriot. 

"The name of the author of this work is strangely enough withheld ... A 
social heaven, in which there will be the most perfect recognition, intercourse, fel- 
lowship, and bliss, is the leading idea of the book, and it is discussed in a fine, 
genial spirit." — Caledonian Mercury, 



Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. 

THE PERFECT LIFE. 

By WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING, D.D. 

Edited from his manuscripts by his nephew, William 
Henry Channing. i2mo. Price $1.50. 



" The pulpit of the present day is in great danger of losing its 
dignity. For this, as well as other reasons, we welcome these Dis- 
courses of Dr. Channing. They are written in a fresh and pure 
style, and express lofty thoughts in simple yet noble language. 
We marvel that they have not been previously given to the pub- 
lic." — Bibliotheca Sacra, 

"The volume is very welcome for many and the best reasons. 
Doubtless a jealous Orthodox critic, intent on finding heresies, 
will discover more or less to cavil at or challenge ; but these Dis- 
courses lift us into an atmosphere too high and serene for polem- 
ical controversy, and tend to make the reader's heart cry out after 
the living God, or lovingly adore him as for the gift of his glorious 
self to the soul. All the charm of Dr. Channing's glowing and 
finished style lend themselves to this significant and reverent 
message from the depths of his heart. Not many books are so 
thoroughly saturated with religion as this, and it is of such a sort 
as the world greatly needs to-day." — Doojer Morning Star, 

"To all who are capable of discriminating we recommend it as 
a work which will enlarge their conceptions of the greatness 
and preciousness of Christianity, and lead them to deal more rev- 
erently with their own nature, and with all questions of duty and 
destiny." — Christian Standard, 

" They tell what we would all gladly believe, if we cannot prove 
it to be true. And they will save those who read them with 
sympathy from that pride of half-knowledge, which makes the 
present seeming a barrier to all future revelation." — Christian 
Register, 

Sold everyvjhere. Mailed post;paid by the Publishers^ 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSRS. ROBERTS BROTHERS' PUBLICATIONS. 



The LAYMAN'S Breviary : 

©r, Mttiit^tiom for ffi&erg Bag in tfte gear. 

FROM THE GERMAN OF LEOPOLD SCHEFER. 

BY C. T. BROOKS. 

Square i6mo. Cloth, gilt, bevelled boards. Price $2.oo» 
Cheaper edition. i6mo. Cloth. Price $1.50. 



Front the Christian Register, 
" The volume, which is a beautiful specimen of t5rpography, and enriched with 
a portrait of its author, consists of a series of poetical meditations for every day 
in the year, characterized by great simplicity and directness of thought, consider- 
able knowledge of life, a high and pure aim, and much beauty of expression. 
Many of the pieces are perfect gems, and the volume will be highly prized by 
thoughtful and cultivated readers. We know no book of its class to which stronger 
praise can be awarded than will be bestowed on this by such persons, as there is 
none which we have read with more satisfaction and profit, or which is more likely 
to furnish wholesome food for thought to every reader." 

From the N» V, Times. 
" Schefer unites the deepest worship of the works of nature — as the creationi 
of God — with the broadest human S3rmpathies, and colors his poetical meditations 
with profuse wealth of Oriental imagery. The plan in which they are arranged — 
a separate meditation for every day in the year — in no way fetters the freedom of 
his fancy, although * the changing seasons of the year * gave an undertone to the 
strain of his poetry. It is not a work to skim through and throw aside : many of 
what at first glance might seem fugitive pieces are deeply suggestive. It would 
be difficult to find a work for presentation of more solid worth. We must not 
omit a word or two as to the general appearance of the book. It is beautifully 
and substantially bound, while the exquisite clearness of the type and the delicate 
tone of the paper are in perfect harmony with the beauty of the thoughts embodied 
in them.'* 

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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 



MESSES. EOBEETS BEOTHEKS' PUBLICATIONS. 

THE PRIMEVAL WORLD OF HEBREW TRA. 
DITION. By Frederic Henry Hedge, D.D., Author oi 
" Reason in Religion." One volume, 16mo. Price $1.50. 

From the New York Tribune, 
Mr. Hedge may be called an eclectic : not as one who picks from dif- 
ferent systems the detached bits that suit bim, and then joins them skilfully 
together ; but as one who, committing himself unreservedly to neither sys- 
tem, endeavors by independent and cultivated insight to get at the deepest 
truth contained in formulas, creeds, and institutions. His faith is wholly 
in reason : he will prove all things, and hold fast only what is good ; but 
his crucibles are various in size and quality, his tests are of many kinds, 
and his reason combines the action of as many intellectual faculties as he 
can bring into play. His faith is planted in a firm but gracious Theism, 
moral like that of Moses, and loving like that of Christ. The belief in a 
divine origin, education, guidance, and discipline of the world, runs through 
his pages ; and a conviction of the moral capabilities and of the spiritual 
destination of man shines in his argument and ennobles the conclusion. 
Those who do not agree with the book need not be offended by it ; and they 
who do agree with it will be charmed by the beauty in which what they 
regard as truth is convei^ted. 

From the London {Eng.) Enquirer. 
We have been unable to criticise because we find ourselves throughout 
in entire sympathy and agreement with the writer. We cordially commend 
Dr. Hedge's book as the best solution we have ever seen of the difficult 
problems connected with the primeval Scripture record, and as an admi- 
rable illustration of the spirit of reverent constructive criticism. Such a 
work as this is almost lik:e a new revelation of the divine worth of the 
ancient Hebrew Traditions, and their permanent relation to the higher 
thought and progress of the world. 

AMERICAN RELIQION. By John Weiss. One 

volume, 16mo. Cloth. Price |1.50. 

From the Philadelphia Press. 

Himself a clergyman, Mr. Weiss writes understandingly upon a very 
Bolemn theme. His closing chapter, entitled " The American Soldier," is 
one cf the noblest and truest tributes to the patriots of 1861-65 ever put into 
print. 

From the Chicago Tribune. 

Mr. Weiss has presented to the public a scheme for an American religion 
which, it is almost needless to say, is a religion of the intellect adapted to 
the highest form of American culture, and not pervaded to any great degree 
with spirituality, as the term is understood among orthodox believers. 
... If Mr. Weiss had christened his scheme " American Morality,*' we 
would gladly have hailed his discovery. As it is, we cannot but commend 
its loftiness of purpose. It is a work full of noble thought, and, however 
much the reader may disagree with it from a religious point of view, there 
are very few who can fail to be struck with its purity of aim and its healthy 
moral tone; while the merely literary reader will derive equal gratification 
from the scholarly style and the richness of illustration and research it di&- 
^lays. The last chapter but one, "Constancy to an Ideal," is one of the 
finest and noblest essays ever written by an American, and deserves to be 
read and heeded by every American. 

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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston- 



MESSES. EOBEETS BEOTHEES' PUBLICATIONS. 

THE INFINITE AND THE FINITE. By The- 

oPHiLus Parsons, Author of " Deus Homo," &c. One neat 
*16mo volume. Cloth. Price $1.00. 

" No one can know," says the author, " better than I do, how poor and 
dim a presentation of a great truth my words must give. But I write them 
in the hope that they may suggest to some minds what may expand in 
their minds into a truth, and, germinating there, grow and scatter seed- 
truth widely abroad. I am sure only of this: The latest revelation offers 
truths and principles which promise to give to man a knowledge of the 
laws of hie being and of his relation to God, — of the relation of the Infinite 
to the Finite. . . . And therefore I believe that it will gradually,— it may 
be very slowly, so utterly does it oppose man's regenerate nature,— but it 
will surely, advance in its power and in its influence, until, in its own 
time, it becomes what the sun is in unclouded noon." 

From the Chicago Republican. 
Few writers have obtained a more enviable reputation in this countrv 
than the author of this little book, and few are more justly entitled to 
consideration. His works upon jurisprudence are to be found in almost 
every public and private law library in the country ; while his writings 
upon Christian philosophy and the science of religion are universally re- 
ceived as models of close and logical reasoning by those even who differ from 
him in the form of their religious belief. . . . IVIr. Parsons has been pro 
nounced to be "* the most fascinating interpreter of the writings of Swe- 
denborg," and the present volume will add to rather than detract from a 
reputation to which he is so justly entitled. The defects of the work are 
only such as necessarily attach to the subject itself. The finite cannot 
grasp the infinite, but the author has accomplished this: he leads the 
reader through new and pleasant paths of thought into the boundless 
immensity that surrounds us, where the mind, freed from the idea that the 
only source of spiritual truth is a revelation, the interpretation of which 
is limited to a prescribed class, feels and acknowledges the power of the 
infinite in newer, simpler, and not less holy truths. 

From tJie New York Evening Post, 

Professor Parsons, in his little work, does not undertake to controvert 
the huge volumes that have been written upon the philosophical problem 
of the Infinite and the Absolute : he merely attempts to show us how the 
problem has been treated by his master, Swedenborg. He has a profound 
reneration for the teachings of that illustrious seer, and his expositions 
tf these teachings have the merit of unusual clearness and simplicity, 
. . . Whatever difficulties the reader encounters in his pages are ditfi- 
eulties inherent in the subjects themselves, and not in his methods of eluci- 
dation. Any one accustomed to think at all upon deep religious questions 
will be able to understand what he means, though he may not be disposed 
to accept his conclusions. And the inquirer who simply wishes to be in- 
formed of the general scope and purport of Swedenborg's remarkable dis- 
closures will find few better helps than the small and unpretending volumei 
tf Professor Parsong. 

^_ 

Sold everywhere. Mailed y postpaid, by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Bostoh. 



MESSES. EOBEKTS BEOTHEES' PUBLIOATIONS. 

AD CLERUM: Advices to a Young Preacher. By 
Joseph Parker, D.D., Author of "Ecce Deus." One vol- 
ume, 16mo. Uniform with "Ecce Deus." Price $1.50. 

From tJie Lutheran Observer. 
We do not know how to begin or where to end our commendation of thii 
book. . . . No one in the ministry, or looking forward to the pulpit, should 
fail to get it. He may have Porter, Vinet, Kidder, and Shedd, but he can- 
not afford to do withou; "Ad Cierum," which is complemental of all the 
rest. 

From Rev. Geo. W.Eaton^D.D., President of Hamilton Theological Semina'*^, 
I have perused it with delighted interest. Though not quite in sym- 
pathy with the flippancy and hyperbolical statements which occur here 
and there in the volume, its instructions are on the whole healthy, per- 
tinent, and '• put " in a form charming and impressive. I know of no work 
connected with homiletical literature which contains so much of valuable 
and timely.instruction in a compass so small and compact. 

EOMAN mPERIALISM, and other Lectures and 
Essays. By J. K. Seelet, M. A., Author of " Ecce Homo." 
One volume, 16mo. Uniform with "Ecce Homo." Price 
$1.60. 

From the St. Louis JourriaZ ofFducation. 
The^author of '* Ecce Homo " has been pronounced the typical writer 
of the present time. Those who have read his former work — and who haa 
not? — will give this a cordial welcome. The Essays entitled ** Liberal 
Education in Universities," "English in Schools," and "The Teaching 
of Politics," challenge the attention of educators; while " The Church as a 
Teacher of Morality" will excite some of the fierce criticism that followed 
the publication of " Ecce Homo." 

From the Pacific. 
The Essay in this volume on " English in Schools " we hope will receive 
attention from educators. It is shameful that so little tliorough knowledge 
is imparted in our high schools, and even colleges, of our own tongue. Mul- 
titudes of young ladies, accomplished in many other respects, are wofully 
deficient in this ; while graduates of colleges almost innumerable know more 
of the meaning, derivation, and power of Greek and Latin words and 
phrases than of their own native English. 

By Joel Benton. 
A new book from the pen of the author of " Ecce Homo " is not by any 
means a slight literary work. The memory of that exquisite picture set 
in the clearest crystal of polished thought — a perfection of art and logic — 
lingers as the faint, sweet aroma which recalls a wonderful but departed 
flower. In an age that seeks to analyze and reconstruct our dearest 
traditions, and re-base religion itself, it took, and still holds, a prominent 
place. 

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ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston 



MESSES. EOBEETS BEOTHEES' PUBLIOATIONS. 

RADICAL PROBLEMS. By Rev. C. A. Bartol, 
D.D. One volume, 16mo. Cloth. Price $2. 

Contents. — Open Questions; Individualism; Transcendentalism; 
Radicalism; Theism; Naturalism; MateriaUsm; SpirituaHsm; Faith; 
Law; Origin; Correlation; Character; Genius: Father Taylor; Expe« 
rience; Hope; Ideahty. 

From the lAheral Christian, 
What a wonderful, wonderful book is the " Radical Problems." We are 
not a third through it yet, and Heaven only knows where and how we shall 
find ourselves at the end of the journey. Already are we so shocked, 
stunned, bewildered, edified, delighted, — in short, thorougnly, thoroughly 
bewitched, — that we have no words to express ourselves. . . . That this 
book has a long life before it who can doubt, or that it will cause a grand 
commotion in the theological world? It will be impetuously attacked and 
vehemently defended, but will survive alike the onslaught of its assailants 
and the intemperate zeal of its defenders ; and will be the fruitful source 
of many a brilliant essay and inspiring discourse and stimulating and 
Buggestive club-talk, long, long after its gentle and gifted author has left 
us to receive a most cordial welcome by his brother thinkers in brighter 
spheres. 

From the Commonwealth, 

Spirituality, purity, gentleness, love, child-like simplicity, bless and 
sanctify him; but he is spirited as well as spiritual. In his gentleness 
there is a quick vivacity, and he sometimes exhibits a keen incisiveness 
as of whetted steel. His aim is not so much to solve as to suggest. He is 
no dogmatist, nor is he an expositor or judge. He finds open questions, 
and delights to leave them open questions still. Meantime he looks into 
them with the eyes of his inmost soul, discerns much, throws out a pro- 
fusion of glancing and irradiating suggestions that open the questions 
farther instead of closing them, then retires to look elsewhere. . . . This 
man carries eternal summer in the eyes, and sees beds of violets in snow- 
banks. His own climate is his world, and he can make no excursions out 
of it. A pleasant world it is, with no deserts, jimgles, reeking bogs, foul, 
ravening creatures, and poles heaped with ice. As some will see only with 
the physical eye, so he with the spiritual only. 

From the Globe, 
It contains seventeen chapters, honestly representing the individual 
Spiritual experience of the author, and at the same time indicating some 
of the intellectual tendencies of the time. It is " radical," not in the usual 
sense of the word, but in its true sense, that of attempting to pierce to the 
roots of things. Many of the opinions and ideas expressed in the book may 
be repudiated by the conservative reader, but its spirit and aim cannot 
fail to charm and invigorate him. Dr. Bartol, indeed, is one of those men 
who have religious genius as well as religious faith. . . . The book is a 
protest against popular theology, made from what the writer considers 
the standpoint of true and pure religion. We have considered it from a 
literary point of view, and, thus considered, its wealth of thought and 
Imaginative illustration entitle it to a high rank among the pubiicationa 
©f the year. 

Sold everywhere. Mailed, postpaidy by the Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston, 



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